ETN raises $1.6M, expands to five-day live show — SkimNews
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- European Technology Network (ETN) raised a $1.6 million seed round from Powerhouse Capital, Axel Springer SE, a LADbible co-founder, and angel investors from OpenAI and DeepMind, with the founders saying they get roughly 70 guest pitches per week.
- ETN launched in London last October by Luke Knight and Ronan Chambers as a two-day-a-week livestream on X and YouTube that has now surpassed 5 million views, and is relocating to a larger Kings Cross studio while growing its eight-person team.
- Upcoming guests include George Robson, a partner at Sequoia, and Rishi Sunak, the former U.K. prime minister now working as a senior advisor to Anthropic and Microsoft, per the founders' announcement.
- Co-founder Ronan Chambers cited Dealroom data showing London startups have raised $14.7 billion so far this year, with six companies clearing $500 million each: Wayve, Superintelligence, ElevenLabs, Recursive, Ineffable Intelligence, and Isomorphic Labs (the latter three founded by DeepMind alumni).
- Sponsors already locked in include prediction market Polymarket, Coinbase's Base blockchain arm, and AI audio company ElevenLabs, with the show monetizing through ad dollars like most media publications.
- The founders explicitly model ETN on TBPN — recently acquired by OpenAI — and frame their version as the regional counterpart for Europe's 40-plus countries and 200-plus languages, while insisting they don't see themselves as journalists or as a replacement for traditional media.
Why it matters: ETN's expansion arrives as London alone has produced six $500M+ startup rounds in 2026, a pace Chambers argues UK media cannot keep up with — meaning the country's most aggressive tech founders now have a daily outlet purpose-built for their announcement cycle rather than waiting for traditional press coverage.
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