Good morning Finn,

The first few months of 2025 were anything but quiet for ElevenLabs, the world-leading AI voice startup headquartered in London. 

After kicking off the year with a $180m Series C raise in January, the company unveiled a new speech-to-text model, cut a deal with music-streaming giant Spotify and opened an office in Japan. 

Some might have found such a lengthy to-do list pressurising. But speaking with Sifted’s Europe editor Mimi Billing at the Sana AI Summit in Stockholm this week, ElevenLabs CEO Mati Staniszewski appeared relaxed: “Every day is like a holiday for me.”

But when asked about the growing competition in the voice space, Staniszewski made it clear he takes the challenge seriously: “We have to be the best,” he said. “We can’t afford to fall behind.”

Elsewhere:

• Klarna reportedly delays IPO to late 2025
• Meet the 25 startups selected for UK’s Future Fifty growth programme

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👀 Swedish fintech Klarna is reportedly delaying its IPO until after the summer, after last month’s market rout threw plans for a public float off-course. 

🗣️ ElevenLabs founder Mati Stanislewski tells Sifted the “pressure is increasing” to keep up with the competition in the text-to-voice industry. 

🏆 Meet the 25 startups selected for Tech Nation’s Future Fifty growth programme.

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Please continue to send funding announcements here as usual.

London-based Juice, an alternative lending platform for SMEs, raised £25m in funding. Paragon Bank, Aern Capital and Falco Capital participated in the round.

London-based Breathe Battery Technologies, which specialises in battery management software, raised $21m in Series B funding. Kinnevik Online AB led the round and was joined by investors including Volvo Cars Tech Fund and Lowercarbon Capital.

Berlin-based Circula, a platform for employees’ expense management, raised €15m. Alstin Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Capnamic Ventures and Wenvest Capital. 

London-based Doubleword (formerly TitanML), which provides self-hosted inference infrastructure for enterprise AI workloads, raised $12m in Series A funding. Dawn Capital led the round and was joined by investors including K5 Global, Clem Delangue and Florian Douetteau.

London-based Valarian, which provides data sovereignty infrastructure, raised $7m in seed funding. Scout Ventures and Artis Ventures led the round and were joined by investors including Gokul Rajaram.

Stockholm-based Centra, an e-commerce platform for fashion brands, raised €4.6m in funding. H&M Group led the round.

Copenhagen-based Alice, an AI learning platform for personalised and interactive studying, raised €4.2m in seed funding. Cherry Ventures and Y Combinator led the round and were joined by investors including Psv Tech.

Treviso, Italy-based Direct from Italy, which provides customs compliance software for direct alcohol sales, raised €1m in seed funding from Marvit.

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