Sifted’s Rising star in Gen AI

Tenyks

Tenyks

Software Engineering, Data Science
Posted on Sep 13, 2023

Gen AI

ChatGPT and its cousins are here to take over

Last updated: 9 Mar 2023

Market 101

Forget the crypto craze: the latest shiny toy is AI. Creative or generative AI tools, like the powerful ChatGPT, can (almost) instantly create vast amounts of content — be it essays, jokes, poetry, job applications, images, video, audio or code — in response to text prompts. The hypesters say this type of AI, also called a large language model, is going to be a foundational bit of tech — like Google — that everyone will use.

Today, it’s a great source of memes; tomorrow, some fear, it’s going to take your job. Already, companies are starting to adopt ChatGPT as a work aid, after Microsoft-backed OpenAI made the app available to the public in November. AI assistants are writing job descriptions for recruiters, lesson plans for teachers and sales pitches for marketers. The ability to chat to ChatGPT has become a job in itself, with entrepreneurs selling access to their “prompt Slack channels'', where you can pick up the latest hints.

ChatGPT’s success is attracting fresh attention to AI companies that have been operating in Europe for years — UnlikelyAI, Aleph Alpha, Sana Labs, Creative Fabrica and PolyAI among them. Many more startups are sprouting up, promising to disrupt everything from the legal system to the ad industry to media.

Early stage market map

Key facts

1bn+

Number of visits to ChatGPT in February; up 62.5% on January1

650m

Number of images used to train art generator tool Dall-E 22

$12bn+

cumulative fundraising of 550+ gen AI startups globally

Startups tracked by Sifted

Sifted take

Compared to another much-hyped bit of tech, the blockchain, generative AI’s certainly more understandable and — so far – fun (if it can steer clear of spreading harmful disinformation, that is). The bigger questions: will it replace people’s jobs, and what do roadmaps look like for generating returns? For as long as it shows a tendency to spout gibberish and confidently make some things up, humans will still be required to rein it in. But let’s go to the source: what does ChatGPT say about its own future? “Overall, it's important to approach the field with both excitement and caution,” the bot told Sifted.

Rising stars

Total funding

€5,500,000

Delft, Netherlands
2021

Backed by the likes of Index Ventures, Kindred Capital and high-profile angels, it developed an AI-assisted platform for protein structure and sequence design.

Round

Seed

Valuation

Undisclosed


Date

2022

Size

€5,500,000

Total funding

Undisclosed

London, United Kingdom
2021

Builds on large language models offering products for wider AI adoption. Backed by Index Ventures, Y Combinator, Albion and LocalGlobe.

Round

Seed

Valuation

Undisclosed


Date

2022

Size

€2,350,000

Total funding

€3,800,000

Cambridge, United Kingdom
2019

A spinout from the University of Cambridge, it’s designed an AI data failure detection and correction platform to train models for computer vision teams.

Round

Seed

Valuation

Undisclosed


Date

2022

Size

€3,400,000

Early stage startups to watch

Aflorithmic Labs

Audio editing & generation

London, United Kingdom
2019
Seed

€2.5m

€570k

-

Aindo

Data practices

Trieste, Italy
2018
Seed

€2.9m

€2.8m

-

Aiva Technologies

Audio editing & generation

Luxembourg, Luxembourg
2016
Seed

€2.3m

€1.5m

-

broadn

Education & training

London, United Kingdom
2022
Bootstrapped

-

-

-

Clickable

Text

Marketing

Göteborg, Sweden
2022
Bootstrapped

-

-

-

CopyMonkey.ai

Text

Marketing & SEO

Riga, Latvia
2020
Pre-seed

€270k

€270k

-

Correcto.

Education & training

Languages

Madrid, Spain
2022
Seed

€7.6m

€7m

-

Cradle

Vision & 3D visuals

Delft, Netherlands
2021
Seed

€5.5m

€5.5m

-

Creatext

Text

Marketing & SEO

Berlin, Germany
2020
Angel

€500k

€400k

-

DeepSearch Labs

AI research

London, United Kingdom
2020
Pre-seed

€230k

€230k

-

Drafter AI

AI platforms

Riga, Latvia
2019
Pre-seed

€40k

€40k

-

EdgeTier

AI assistants

Dublin, Ireland
2017
Seed

€1.5m

€1.5m

-

Flawless (Limited)

Data practices

London, United Kingdom
2022
Pre-seed

€900k

€900k

-

Flowrite

Text

Marketing & SEO

Helsinki, Finland
2020
Seed

€4.5m

€4m

-

Fluento

Education & training

London, United Kingdom
2022
Bootstrapped

-

-

-

HeiTech Ltd (Hei.io)

Images & video editing

Espoo, Finland
2021
Angel

€150k

€100k

-

Humanloop

AI platforms

London, United Kingdom
2020
Seed

-

-

-

Hypertype

Text

Marketing & SEO

Stockholm, Sweden
2021
Pre-seed

€1.5m

€1.2m

-

Inferex

AI platforms

Dublin, Ireland
2021
Pre-seed

€1.3m

€1.3m

-

jamie

Text

Transcripts

Cologne, Germany
2022
Pre-seed

-

-

-

Kinetix

Vision & 3D visuals

Gaming

Paris, France
2020
Seed

€10.5m

€10.5m

-

Kive

Images & video editing

Stockholm, Sweden
2018
Seed

€7.9m

€6.4m

-

Labelf AI

Data practices

Stockholm, Sweden
2021
Angel

€650k

€500k

-

LightOn

AI platforms

Paris, France
2016
Seed

€3m

€3m

-

neuroflash

Content creation

Hamburg, Deutschland
2021
Pre-seed

€800k

€800k

-

Pathway (pathway.com)

Data practices

Paris, France
2020
Pre-seed

€4.1m

€4.1m

-

Qdrant

Data practices

Berlin, Germany
2021
Pre-seed

€2m

€2m

-

Reface

Images & video editing

Kyiv, Ukraine
2019
Seed

€5.5m

€5.5m

-

Stenography

Data practices

NYC, USA
2021
Bootstrapped

-

-

-

Surfer

Text

Marketing & SEO

Wrocław, Poland
2017
Bootstrapped

-

-

-

Synthesys

Images & video editing

Marketing & SEO

London, United Kingdom
2020
Bootstrapped

-

-

-

Syntonym

Data practices

Synthetic data

London, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
2021
Pre-seed

€409k

€368k

-

Tenyks

AI platforms

Cambridge, United Kingdom
2019
Seed

€3.8m

€3.4m

-

TextCortex AI

Text

Marketing & SEO

Berlin, Germany
2021
Pre-seed

€1.1m

€1.1m

-

Turing Intelligence Technology Limited

AI platforms

London, United Kingdom
2018
Seed

€4.6m

€3.6m

-

Twain

Text

Marketing & SEO

Berlin, Germany
2021
Seed

€4.4m

€2m

-

Unlikely AI

AI platforms

London, United Kingdom
2019
Seed

€19.5m

€18.2m

-

WordLift

Text

Marketing & SEO

Rome, Italy
2017
Seed

€800k

€800k

-

Write with LAIKA ApS

Productivity

Transcripts

Copenhagen, Denmark
2022
Grant

€250k

€250k

-

Yepic.ai

Images & video editing

London, United Kingdom
2020
Seed

€4m

€3m

€30m

YouMakr

Education & training

London, United Kingdom
2021
Angel

€200k

€150k

-

Zebracat

Images & video editing

Marketing & SEO

Berlin, Germany
2021
Pre-seed

€425k

€425k

-

Sources

Data sources

Sifted | Proprietary data

Dealroom.co | Data

Research reports

How to make money from generative AI | January 2023 | firstminute capital

2 Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents | April 2022 | Research reports

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