This week, Andreas Munk Holm sits down with Jack Leeney, co-founder of 7GC, the transatlantic growth fund bridging Silicon Valley and Europe and a backer of AI giants like Anthropic, alongside European rising stars Poolside and Fluidstack.
From IPOs at Morgan Stanley to running Telefónica’s US venture arm and now operating a dual-continental fund, Jack shares how 7GC reads the AI supercycle, why infrastructure and platforms win first, and what Europe must fix to unlock the next wave of venture liquidity.
🎧 Here’s what’s covered:
02:00 7GC’s transatlantic model: investing where liquidity lives
05:00 AI’s stack order: infra → platforms → horizontal → vertical
10:40 Hype vs. compute cycles: why this time is different
11:30 OpenAI vs. Anthropic vs. Mistral: the new map of winners
17:40 Llama, open source, and Meta’s defensive play
19:00 European AI bets: Poolside, Fluidstack, and dual-market strategies
22:40 The EU AI Act: noise, nuance, and why customers still decide
26:30 IPOs are back: US windows, European silence
33:00 Liquidity, secondaries, and when 7GC hands stock to LPs
37:40 Europe’s missing link: scaled M&A
43:00 What policymakers and corporates must do next
You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify 🎧
✍️ Show Notes
7GC in one glance
Structure & mandate: Multi-stage transatlantic growth investor. Dual hubs in California and Europe; most capital raised from European LPs, most deployed in US growth-stage tech.
Focus: Category-defining software and infrastructure plays, often bridging US product maturity with European investor capital.
Stages: Series A–C and later-stage secondaries, with select earlier positions when conviction runs high.
Thesis: Identify global compute and platform shifts early, back critical infrastructure first, and arbitrage liquidity between continents.
The AI Supercycle: Why It’s Different
Jack doesn’t mince words:
“We had to decide if this was a hype cycle or a compute cycle. Compute cycles are rare—but they mint trillions.”
7GC’s conviction: this is not another “dotcom moment.” It’s a structural rebuild of the compute layer — akin to the cloud revolution, but inverted.
Cloud = efficiency.
AI = capability.
In the cloud era, spend went down per unit of output. In AI, spend explodes — but so do possibilities.
That’s why 7GC plays early and deep in infrastructure and platforms, not the overcrowded “AI app” layer.
The Stack Hierarchy
Leane’s simple but powerful framework for where value accrues:
1️⃣ Hardware & Compute Access – GPUs, data centers, distributed compute (e.g., CoreWeave).
2️⃣ Infrastructure Software – orchestration, scaling, data infra.
3️⃣ Platforms – LLMs, agents, horizontal enablers.
4️⃣ Vertical Applications – end-user tools, often overvalued early.
“Infrastructure and platforms are critical and sticky. Vertical apps? That’s where the risk premium is too high.”
Reading the Model Wars
Jack’s map of today’s LLM field is refreshingly non-tribal:
Company Segment Edge OpenAI Consumer Distribution, UX, productization Anthropic Enterprise Security, compliance, CIO-grade integration Mistral Europe Alignment with EU policy & sovereignty agenda Llama (Meta) Open Source Developer velocity—but no clear monetization
“OpenAI has won consumer. Anthropic has won enterprise. And Mistral? They’ll be Europe’s regulated champion.”
Jack’s least favorite myth?
That open source will solve the economics of AI.
“I’m not really a believer that open source scales as a business model. Meta can subsidize Llama — but that can’t last forever.”
Transatlantic Investing in AI
Despite the narrative, Jack sees no talent gap between continents:
“At a human level, there’s no difference between the US and Europe. The data science talent here is world-class.”
The real delta? Liquidity.
“The volume and return profile of exits in Europe is just not comparable to the US. Unless you’ve built global from day one, you might stay private forever.”
That’s why 7GC’s European portfolio companies — like Poolside and Fluidstack — are structured for dual-market access: European talent + US-scale exit paths.
Regulation, Reality & the EU AI Act
While many US peers see the EU AI Act as overreach, Jack calls it manageable noise:
“Ultimately, customers decide. If the product is great, revenue will show it.”
He expects smart European founders to use regulation as differentiation:
“There’s an edge to being the partner of choice inside Europe’s framework.
If you can play by the rules and still ship, you’ll own the biggest GDP markets here.”
IPO Windows & the Return of Liquidity
Having started his career in IPO banking, Jack reads the macro winds carefully:
“IPOs are delicate. The weather forecast has to be perfect. But right now, the window’s open.”
Recent US listings — Klarna, CoreWeave, Netskope, StubHub — show there’s appetite again.
Europe? Still asleep.
“For the best European assets, it’s a hard choice not to list in the US. Depth and quality of investors still win.”
Post-IPO, 7GC keeps things clean:
“Once lockups end, LPs choose stock or cash. We’re not hedge fund managers.”
At growth stage, secondaries are the real driver:
“If you’re investing above a billion valuation, you’ve boxed yourself into an IPO or one of the top 10 M&A trades of the year. That’s why secondary markets matter — the inputs don’t match the outputs.”
Europe’s Missing Flywheel
Jack’s diagnosis of the continent’s real bottleneck is blunt:
“The problem isn’t talent. It’s scaled M&A.”
While public markets get the attention, the lack of large private exits quietly throttles Europe’s compounding loop:
No recycled angel capital.
No new funds from operator-turned-founders.
No momentum for the next cohort.
“The US didn’t get there through policy; it got there through paydays.
Google buying DoubleClick created a generation of New York angels. Europe needs its version of that.”
Jack’s Playbook for Founders & Policymakers
Own the stack: early infra and platform plays compound faster than vertical apps.
Design for dual markets: build in Europe, exit where liquidity lives.
Treat regulation as a moat, not a tax.
Push for scaled M&A: corporates and banks must buy, not just partner.
Use secondaries strategically: liquidity breeds ecosystem health.
💬 One-liner takeaway
Europe doesn’t have a talent problem — it has a liquidity problem. The next supercycle belongs to those who fix that.
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