Seb Johnson

BREAKING: Sequoia is closing its London office!

DAMN

The firm just announced it doesn't "see the need for a local presence" and as a result "several people will be leaving Sequoia"

Here's the full paragraph:

"We are closing our London office, which means several people will be leaving Sequoia. This is not about the team - they are excellent. We simply don’t see the need for a local presence. We believe that Europe will continue to produce outlier founders and companies, and that we can continue to provide world class support from our home base in the Bay Area."

Very interesting move and follows the footsteps of a16z which closed their london office a few years ago.

Could we see more US firms doing this?

HUGE shout-out to London teams who are GOATS @biad_anas @_georgerobson @JulienBek @LucianaLix

very excited to see what they do next

BREAKING: Monzo is in talks to raise at a £7.5bn valuation after Nubank acquisition talks fail!

According to the FT "talks between the London-based digital bank and private equity groups about a minority stake sale have stalled" as well.

Monzo was rumoured to be in talks with Nubank for a potential £10bn takeover. Nubank's share price dropped on the news.

Those talks then ended and the Neobank held talks with PE groups to sell a stake at an £8bn valuation.

Now it is exploring a fresh fundraise at a £7.5bn valuation.

This is a LARGE increase on its latest valuation which was £4.5bn in an employee share sale in 2024.

Its latest financial were VERY strong which puts it in a good position:

> Revenue of £1.7bn (+39% YoY)
> Pre-tax profits of £87m (+44% YoY)

Full article from @IvanLevingston linked below

A new UK AI frontier lab in chemistry has just emerged from stealth.

It's the latest startup to be backed by the @UKSovereignAI fund.

The company is founded by Dr. Hatem Helal who believes that if we really want to use AI to discover new drugs we need more data - data that the team at Potential Sciences is developing.

Its mission is to predict how any molecule will behave before it is ever made, by training AI on data generated from the laws of physics, at the accuracy of a lab measurement.

The team are developing an AI model focused on the fundamental laws of physics, rather than previous experimental data. This could make the AI calculations needed to design chemicals 100 times cheaper than at present.

Today they have come out of stealth with over eight figures in funding via equity and compute backed by Sovereign AI (Joséphine Kant), Twin Path Ventures (Nick Slater) and several others.

Very cool.

It's amazing to see more frontier labs coming out of the UK

The day after Sequoia leaves London it's revealed that Isomorphic is raising $5bn at a $50bn valuation.

There have never been more global category leaders coming out of Europe right now:

> Black forest labs
> Isomorphic
> Legora
> Lovable
> synthesia

+ many more.

European Tech is in the strongest position it has ever been.

All of these companies are number 1 or 2 in their category, globally.

Sequoia has its own reasons for leaving but you can be sure that if Europe continues to develop the quality of companies it is producing, it will continue to invest here (US partners led the ineffable round here in London).

The only way is up for Europe

a record breaking $10bn AUM per GP

Wild