Hello and welcome back.

In this week’s edition Fuse Energy is competing to become Europe’s fastest growing company, Legora is about to become a unicorn, Modal has become a unicorn, and Italy is building its own LLM.

I’ve also included my first ever poll (it’s about Entrepreneur First closing down its French and German programmes) as I would love to use this newsletter to hear about what you - the builders, operators and investors across Europe think.

Last week The Scaling Europe Show live-streamed from Bits & Pretzels where I spoke to:

Check it out on here on Youtube or Spotify!

I also have my first sponsor for this newsletter - check them out here.

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The UK energy company founded by Revolut executives is a new frontrunner for Europe’s fastest growing startup.

The company hit 50k users this summer which it then doubled in August (to 100k), and then it hit 150k a few weeks later.

In line with customer growth, revenue growth has also skyrocketed. It took 2 years to hit $100m revenue run rate, then a few weeks to hit $200m and now it's just surpassed $300m.

I interviewed CEO Alan Chang here.

The Swedish startup is building AI automation tools for lawyers and has already signed some of the world's most prestigious firms (such as Bird & Bird and Taylor Wessing), and over 400 in total.

In May this year Legora was valued at $675m after its $80m Series B. Now it’s reportedly raising $100m at a $1.7bn valuation.

The company is only two years old as is another of the new generation of Stockholm stars. Read more here.

The Milan-based LLM and AI gigafactory company is looking to raise over €1bn in the next 6 months.

The company's models have been shown to perform at a similar level to that of OpenAI and Anthropic, however the Italian startup is targeting regulated industries over a mass market approach.

It's also building AI Gigafactories in Italy with its first site to open in 2026.

Read more here.

It’s been a terrible year for the London Stock Exchange. Less than $200m has been raised so far - it’s worst year in over twenty years.

There is however, some early signs that things are looking up:

All in all very positive stuff.

Entrepreneurs First has scrapped its programmes in France and Germany in favour of new programmes for European entrepreneurs in the US.

Since the company started focusing on helping founders break into the US valuations have doubled and time to raise has halved (according to EF).

This has caused mixed reactions across social media. Some support the move and say it makes sense (and should’ve happened sooner), others have accused them of abandoning Europe.

Let me know what you think below.

The Paris-based defence startup (building drones) is seeking a billion-dollar valuation in its next funding round, according to Sifted.

The company is only a year old but has signed multiple contracts with various governments, and is reportedly planning to build a facility in France next year to produce 10k drones a month.

Read more here.

THAT’S ALL. Thank you.

Seb