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The Sifted Podcast: AR surgery, plastic-gobbling enzymes and N26’s dirty laundry

This week on The Sifted Podcast we dig into N26's dirty laundry, and Nathan Benaich, founder of Air Street Capital, answers the question: why does Europe suck at spinouts?

By The Sifted Podcast Team

Listen to The Sifted Podcast on Apple, Spotify and all major platforms.

This week on The Sifted Podcast, we’re discussing the latest in big raises — like Proximie, a company using AR to help surgeons perform tricky operations, which just raised an $80m Series C round from investors including SoftBank.

Epoch Biodesign, a company developing enzymes that can eat plastic waste, also raised $11m. This is cool not only because Epoch Biodesign targets plastics that are currently unrecyclable, but also because the founders have a pretty big intergenerational gap — 21-year-old Jacob Nathan, who is also CEO, and Douglas Kell, a professor of systems biology 48 years his senior.

Next, we dig into what the latest employment data from hiring platform Otta is saying about the market dip.

We also chat with fintech reporter Amy O’Brien about her interview with fintech N26’s founder, Valentin Stalf. They dig into the neobank’s dirty laundry, including compliance issues, struggles with employee retention and its newest foray into crypto trading.

Finally, we speak to Nathan Benaich, founder of Air Street Capital, a micro VC firm investing in artificial intelligence startups. He answers the question: why does Europe suck at spinouts?