ETN raises $1.6M seed, expands its TBPN-style show to five days

European Technology Network (ETN) raised the seed round from Powerhouse Capital, Axel Springer SE (which owns Business Insider and Politico), a co-founder of the media publication LADbible, and angel investors from OpenAI and DeepMind, the company announced Monday. With the new capital, ETN is moving into a larger studio in London’s Kings Cross, expanding its eight-person team, launching a newsletter, and — the same day as the funding news — shifting to a five-day-a-week live-show schedule.

The show, streamed on X and YouTube, has drawn more than 5 million views since launch and has become a stop on the press tour for European startups: guests have included the founders of Synthesia and Granola, the CFO of Legora, and Kanishka Narayan, the UK’s first AI minister, alongside visiting US investors such as one from Andreessen Horowitz. Co-founder Ronan Chambers said ETN gets around 70 pitches a week from would-be guests — more than the prior format of 12 interviews across two two-hour shows a week could handle. “It’s centered around pace,” Chambers said of the show’s founding idea. The new format keeps a noon-to-3 p.m. UK slot — an hour on trending stories followed by two hours of guest interviews — with debates, roundtables, and a pitch-style segment planned. ETN said it will soon host Sequoia partner George Robson and former UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, now a senior advisor to Anthropic and Microsoft.

Chambers pointed to the pace of European funding as the reason for expanding: London startups have raised $14.7 billion so far this year, according to Dealroom, with six companies — Wayve, Superintelligence, ElevenLabs, Recursive, Ineffable Intelligence, and Isomorphic Labs (the latter three founded by DeepMind alumni) — each raising more than $500 million. ETN’s founders cite TBPN, the US livestream co-founded by John Coogan and Jordi Hays that recently sold to OpenAI for what some say was a nine-figure sum, as a pioneer of the format, though they say ETN will keep bringing on guests from across Europe’s more than 40 countries as well as American founders. The show earns revenue from advertising, with sponsors including Polymarket, Base, and ElevenLabs.

Why it matters

European venture funding is now large and fast-moving enough to sustain its own always-on media operation, following the same made-for-media-attention playbook that turned TBPN into a nine-figure acquisition target in the US.