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Main Stage
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Workshop StageAI answer engines are changing how startups get discovered. Increasingly, buyers are using AI to research vendors, compare options, and build shortlists before they ever visit a website. The startups that show up in those answers will have a significant advantage. Martina Simon from HubSpot's Revenue Marketing team breaks down what AEO is, how founders can increase visibility in AI-generated answers, and what happens when that visibility turns into demand. Learn how AI-sourced buyers behave, what makes them convert, and how to build a revenue motion that turns AI citations into pipeline and revenue.
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Workshop StageStartups are a legitimate asset class but with its own risk profile, dynamics, and strategies. This hands on workshop breaks down how to approach early-stage investing intentionally, whether you're ju …
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Stage 2The UK's academic expertise is spread up and down the country, but the value driven by its university spinout base is still largely concentrated in the Golden Triangle. This panel will get into what's …
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Roundtable Room 2
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Main StageEurope's AI ambitions span quantum-inspired computing to sovereign compute and enterprise-grade AI systems. This panel brings together founders building different pieces of that stack to discuss what …
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Roundtable Room 2Over the past year, we’ve seen more fintech businesses move into investing, while government policy continues to encourage greater retail participation in capital markets. So what’s behind the shift? …
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Roundtable Room 1
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Roundtable Room 1
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Main StageWith deep-pocketed US labs having increased their presence in Europe over the past year, startups are under pressure to find new ways of securing and retaining their best people. This panel will touch …
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Stage 2Marketing budget is shifting from paid media to creators faster than anyone is measuring it, and the people spending it can't agree on what they're buying. Is this a durable channel with its own econo …
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Roundtable Room 1Speakers
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Stage 2How are defence techs managing supply chain risks? What does the landscape looks like now for investors? What is it like building a sustainable business with defence revenue?
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Roundtable Room 1We hear the stats around funding to underrepresented founders but are which efforts to make changes are working. What do we need more or less of? Led by Amardeep Parmar, cofounder of Bae HQ, UK’s star …Speakers
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Stage 2Climate tech was all the rage, until it wasn’t. Trump’s return to power, alongside the failure of leading climate tech businesses, dampened investor appetite in the category. But one sector within it …
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Main StageA combination of better AI models, cheap hardware and a race to collect reams of data has led to an investment boom in European robotics, as VCs take a bet that the scaling laws which have underpinned …
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Stage 2The lack of local, late-stage growth funding has plagued European tech for years. But with the EU’s €5bn Scaleup Europe Fund starting to deploy this year, along with a host of other growth funds being …
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Main StageIt’s an established fact that much of Europe’s digital infrastructure and tech relies on companies headquartered outside of the bloc. With an increasingly fraught geopolitical landscape, the need for …
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Main StageSeveral aspects of Europe’s financial world are dominated by US players, from digital wallets to card payments. But with a continental push for sovereignty in motion, will European fintechs finally ha …
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Stage 2
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Main Stage
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Stage 2
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Stage 2
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Roundtable Room 1Speakers
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Roundtable Room 1
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Workshop StageYou're a founder, your company is growing - and then comes the question every scale-up eventually hits: how do you bring on the right people without slowing down or stepping into a legal grey zone? In this live session, you decide. Where you invest, who you hire, how you make it happen - and you see exactly where each choice leads.Speakers
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Stage 2Growth without thinking about its impact can’t be the only playbook. What are companies doing to ensure they’re thinking about more than the bottom line? In this panel we will get into what companies …
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Main StageHe’s perhaps Europe’s most famous VC. Harry Stebbings, podcaster and founder of investment firm 20VC, joins associate editor Freya Pratty to discuss everything from the future of tech media to Stebbin …
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Main StageAs European governments pour more money into defence, AI, energy and other strategic technologies, public-sector contracts are becoming an increasingly important prize for the continent’s startups. Bu …
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Stage 2As startups and small businesses struggle with balancing digital tools and systems, embedded services are increasingly becoming a solution. These systems integrate financial tools, vertical SaaS, and …
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Roundtable Room 1Most founders know how to spend the capital they raise. Fewer know how to protect it. This roundtable brings together startup CFOs who've navigated real cash pressure for a candid exchange on what dis …
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Main StageExpansion can be a great way to grow — or a fast way to burn cash and lose focus. The tricky part is knowing when you’re really ready to enter a new market. What should the first 90 day look like? How …
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Roundtable Room 2What are our most compelling assets that give us a global competitive edge? What can UK Gov do to unlock that opportunity set? What it is in our power as a Deeptech community that will help unlock thi …
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Main Stage
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Roundtable Room 1
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Stage 2
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Main StageSecondaries have gone from something founders did quietly to one of Europe’s hottest markets. But is the hype a sign of real maturity or a workaround for an IPO and M&A market that still isn’t opening …
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Stage 2
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Workshop Stage
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Main Stage
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Main Stage
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Workshop StageThe right time to patent your IP, building a portfolio that supports scaling and fundraising, what AI can do and avoiding common mistakes as companies grow. - Most founders do patent as an afterthough …
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Workshop StageWhat got you here will not get you there. This interactive workshop looks at the realities of raising a later-stage round, from what investors now expect to whether your business is actually ready for …
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Stage 2
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Workshop StageAs companies stay private for longer, employees are increasingly holding equity that can't be realised. Employee secondary transactions through the London Stock Exchange's (LSEs) Private Securities Ma …
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Roundtable Room 1
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Roundtable Room 2As financial institutions grow, transaction volumes, products and markets can outpace the controls built to manage them. This roundtable will examine what needs to change and what must remain.
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Main Stage
The 2026 Sifted 250 will be unveiled live at the Sifted Summit, revealing Europe’s 250 fastest-growing startups by revenue and the trends shaping the continent’s high-growth ecosystem.
The launch will be followed by a panel discussion exploring what drives exceptional revenue growth and how companies can turn a breakout period into a repeatable growth engine. The session will conclude with an awards ceremony celebrating the standout companies in this year’s ranking, before networking drinks with many of the founders and teams featured in the Sifted 250.
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Workshop StageWhen every company uses the same AI models, does human thinking become the advantage? AI is not just changing jobs, it is redefining who becomes valuable. The most valuable people will not simply know …
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Roundtable Room 2
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Workshop StageThis session unpacks the key decisions, timelines, and stakeholder dynamics that shape M&A and IPO outcomes.Speakers
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Main StageThe promise of living a healthier life is convincing a growing number of consumers, who are increasingly turning to tools ranging from longevity clinics and body scans to AI-powered preventative medic …
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Stage 2
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Main StageEurope is betting big on physical AI. From robotics and autonomous systems to AI-powered machines, the sector is attracting growing interest from investors and enterprise customers. Where the money is …
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Main StageOnce you've reached Series A, the game changes. Investors expect proven product-market fit, you need real customer traction, and your team needs to consist of operators who can scale. What does it rea …
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Stage 2Speakers
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Main StageThe way people consume tech news is changing fast. Traditional publications are battling declining traffic, squeezed business models and the rise of AI search, while founders and investors increasingl …
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Workshop StageThe hardest companies to understand are the easiest to undervalue. In this closed workshop, scale-up CEOs hear their company described back by sharp peers who've never heard the pitch. They find exactly where its significance is getting lost, before it costs them.
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Workshop StageThe hardware path is brutal. In this candid, off-the-record conversation, we get into the financing, manufacturing, and go-to-market realities that make it so much harder than software, with one of th …
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Roundtable Room 2
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Stage 2As interactions with AI at work move from conversing with a chatbot to building and managing teams of agents carrying out tasks on a worker’s behalf, what it means to be human in the workplace is chan …
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Stage 2European quantum has had a bumper year featuring two of the leading startups in the space, Finland’s IQM Quantum Computers and Paris-based Pasqal, hitting the public markets. Is quantum entering a new …
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Main StageWith AI making it faster and cheaper than ever to spin up tools in-house, companies are thinking twice before making acquisitions. This panel will ask whether businesses should still consider buying a …
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Roundtable Room 1Scaling founders and operators know they need to change how they operate but aren’t clear what good looks like. This roundtable will discuss tactical frameworks you can apply immediately.Speakers
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Stage 2
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Workshop StageEnergy, robotics, health, biotech and more: Europe has the science, the talent and the industrial depth to lead, but the next five to ten years will decide where it can actually win and where it risks …
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Roundtable Room 2This roundtable looks at what breaks when code arrives faster than teams can review it, and what’s actually working for the teams pulling ahead. Across 20 million CI workflows, feature-branch activity …
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Main StageAs geopolitical tensions continue to escalate, Europe finds itself far behind in its ability to access space without the help of foreign companies. A new set of European space hopefuls ranging from ro …
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Workshop StageThe talent market is bifurcating. Many proven leaders operate traditional playbooks while high-potential innovators often lack scaling experience. Those elite talents possessing both qualities are rar …
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Roundtable Room 2Speakers
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Roundtable Room 1
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Main StageAfter years of buzz around text- and image-based large-language models (LLMs), world models are promising to take the technology to the next frontier with systems capable of understanding the laws of …
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Stage 2Raising your Series A requires good timing, storytelling nous, and knowing what investors are really looking for. In this session, three investors pull back the curtain on what actually moves a Series …
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Roundtable Room 2Due diligence can uncover problems founders didn’t know they had, but not every red flag is going to derail a deal. This practical roundtable with LegalEdge (fractional GCs) and Fyn (fractional CFOs) …
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