Hi friends,

The strongest CVCs are not built around deal flow. They are built around organisational readiness.

That was one of the clearest takeaways from our recent conversation with Marc Thom, Head of Henkel Ventures.

And in the current market, that distinction matters more than ever.

The latest BVK Global Venture Capital Monitor report from Joerg Landsch and Attila Dahmann puts the shift in stark terms: global VC investment hit a record $285.5 billion in Q1 2026, with 79% of capital going into AI companies and 86% of deployed capital concentrated in mega-rounds.

That changes what advantage actually means for corporates.

When capital concentrates this heavily around a small number of large AI companies and technologies, access alone becomes less differentiated. More players can see the same opportunities. Far fewer are structured to act on them.

That is where the real edge now sits.

Marc made this point clearly. Before Henkel Ventures scaled startup activity, the team built the internal operating system first: investment theses, partnership frameworks, decision processes, business-unit alignment, and clear ownership around execution.

That preparation is what turns startup partnerships and venture investing from interesting activity into strategic capability.

Because AI is not just creating new software categories. It is forcing industrial companies to rethink how they approach R&D, procurement, workflows, formulation, and strategic planning itself.

So the real question for CVCs is no longer: do we have access to AI deal flow? It is: are we actually ready to turn external innovation into internal advantage?

We will explore many of the broader questions around AI, strategy, and corporate venture further in our upcoming AMA on AI usage inside CVCs. More details soon.

And if these are the conversations you care about, join us at the EUVC Corporate Summit 2026 on September 10 in London.

Keep reading for more insights across European tech and venture. Hope you enjoy this week’s edition.

with 💖
David & Andreas

Event spotlight

Insights

Podcasts

Events

This summer, EUVC is doing something we've never done before.

We've taken editorial ownership of a dedicated investment stage at Love Tomorrow Summit at Tomorrowland, one of Europe's most compelling gatherings for minds that want to shape what's next.

On July 23 in Boom, Belgium: 90 minutes of keynotes on the iconic Rose Garden Stage, and a curated investor programme at The Impact Circle's Investor Lounge on Friday.

Europe's most thoughtful investors. A setting unlike any other.

The next wave of sustainability investing may sit beyond Climate Tech.

In his new article, Climate Tech was just the beginning, Satgana Founder and CEO Romain Diaz makes the case for “Earth Tech”: companies rebuilding the planetary systems underpinning long-term human prosperity, from water and biodiversity to food systems and resilience.

The key insight for investors: the strongest businesses increasingly succeed where environmental necessity and commercial incentives align, solving immediate economic and operational constraints, not just sustainability goals.

Most investors still see corporate venture capital as slower, more conflicted and strategically constrained than traditional VC. Henkel Ventures argues the opposite.

In this episode, Marc Thom, Corporate Vice President and Head of Henkel Ventures, joins Andreas Munk Holm and Jeppe Høier to explain why professionally run CVCs can outperform financial VCs over time, how Henkel built one of Europe’s leading corporate venture platforms and what most corporates still get wrong about working with startups.

Everyone says AI is taking jobs. The data says something more complicated. In this week’s episode of This Week in European Tech, Dan Bowyer and Mads Jensen of SuperSeed examine the growing panic around AI-driven job losses, why junior hiring is falling and whether remote work may be a bigger factor than AI itself.

They also cover Anthropic’s latest model, Europe’s sovereignty dilemma, the rise of AI application-layer companies and the emergence of the zero-employee AI startup.