Welcome to a new episode of the EUVC Podcast, where our good friends Dan Bowyer, Mads Jensen, Lomax Ward, and Andrew Beebe (Managing Director at Obvious Ventures) dig into the headlines shaping Europe’s venture, policy, and tech future.
This week, the crew dives deep into automation and AI’s real-world impact:
Amazon’s plans to replace half a million jobs with robots, the question of whether AI can truly spark a new industrial revolution in Europe, the UK’s new AI sandbox experiment, and an update on the long-awaited 28th Regime—the EU’s bid for a unified startup entity.
They also unpack China’s automation surge, Europe’s productivity crisis, and whether policy and politics are keeping pace with the technology curve.
🎧 Here’s what’s covered
00:24 Amazon’s Robot Push - Replacing 500,000+ jobs with automation — what it means for Europe’s workforce and competitiveness.
05:26 Automation & Employment - Europe’s 31M manufacturing workers, Germany’s 80% robotized auto sector, and whether job “shifts” beat displacement.
09:37 Productivity & Policy Tension - Can Europe keep up as Asia deploys 70% of new industrial robots? And how do we balance growth with labor protection?
16:00 AI’s Second Industrial Revolution - John Thornhill’s “Industrial Revolution 2.0” thesis — does Europe have the institutional capacity to absorb and profit from AI?
21:24 Enterprise AI Failure Modes - Why 50–75% of AI implementations flop — and why it’s a skills and structure problem, not a tech one.
26:05 White Collar Co-Pilots - AI as enabler, not replacer — from doctors to lawyers — and why the change must happen at human speed.
28:00 China’s Lead & Europe’s Complacency - China’s robot factories, biotech dominance, and why European policymakers “don’t feel the fire.”
34:15 Politics & Technocracy - Why Europe needs tech-literate leaders before the next wave of disruption turns social.
38:00 UK’s AI Sandbox - A new initiative to let startups test AI in the wild — but is it another FCA-style fix or a token gesture?
41:30 AI in the NHS - Where regulatory sandboxes could actually work — in diagnostics, admin automation, and cutting waiting lists.
48:00 EU’s 28th Regime - A pan-European startup entity proposal — regulation vs. directive, and whether it can fix the admin drag across borders.
55:00 The German Bottleneck - How 200+ local laws still choke innovation — and why fixing Germany alone could free €800M+ annually.
59:00 Deal of the Week: CoalMine - Plural backs UK brain-computer interface startup CoalMine with a $102M Series A — Europe’s Neuralink moment.
✍️ Show Notes
Amazon’s Automation Ambition
Amazon plans to automate 75% of US operations by 2033 — signaling the next phase of physical AI.
Europe’s already heavily automated (80% of German auto assembly), but 80% of warehouses remain manual.
The upside: 12B+ in productivity savings; the downside: political friction and job anxiety.
“We can’t fund Europe’s welfare state 20 years from now without massive productivity reform.” — Mads Jensen
Productivity, Politics & Pain
Europe employs 31M people in manufacturing, making it the bloc’s largest employment sector.
Automation is inevitable — but social stability isn’t.
Upskilling efforts (Amazon’s €25M in Europe) are positive, but not enough to offset structural headwinds.
China’s “dark factories” already run 300K+ industrial robots versus just 2.5K in the UK.
Labor laws and NIMBYism slow Europe’s response — while Asia races ahead.
Industrial Revolution 2.0
The new revolution isn’t steam and coal — it’s data and cognition.
Europe risks missing the wave not from lack of ideas, but lack of institutional absorption.
AI implementation fails for the same reasons ERP did: organizational friction, missing skills, poor data hygiene.
“AI isn’t failing because it’s overhyped — it’s failing because companies aren’t ready for it.” — Mads Jensen
Human vs. Machine: Co-Pilots, Not Killers
AI won’t replace lawyers or doctors — it’ll augment them.
The real industrial change will be gradual — co-pilots that expand capacity rather than erase jobs.
China’s revolution is visible; Europe’s is cultural.
Automation is how to save welfare economics, not what destroys them.
Policy Lag: The Political Deficit
Europe’s biggest constraint isn’t capital or code — it’s leadership.
Tech-literate politicians like Estonia’s former president Thomas Hendrik Ilves are rare.
Without visionary technocrats, AI could drive social upheaval rather than progress.
“If we screw up AI and robotics, we’ll get revolutions again — just like after the first Industrial Revolution.” — Lomax Ward
The UK’s AI Sandbox
New government plans mimic the FCA’s 2015 fintech sandbox — but AI isn’t fintech.
A ring-fenced “NHS sandbox” could make sense: deploy AI for diagnostics and admin backlog reduction under strict guardrails.
Otherwise, it’s a policy press release more than a scalable fix.
“Unless we up the ambition, it’s just educating more grey hair to make slower decisions.” — Mads Jensen
EU’s 28th Regime: Delaware or Delusion?
The EU’s 28th Regime promises one legal entity for startups to raise, sell, and scale across borders.
But if it lands as a directive, not a regulation, every country can reinterpret it — a recipe for bureaucracy.
Germany alone accounts for €800M in wasted admin costs yearly; fixing that would be a win.
Still, without unified stock option taxation, it won’t match Delaware’s simplicity.
“Even if EU Inc wins regulation status, national tailoring will water it down.” — Mads Jensen
Deal of the Week: CoalMine
CoalMine (UK) raised $102M Series A led by Plural, positioning itself as a non-invasive Neuralink.
Using low-power infrared and optical sensors to monitor cerebral blood flow and brain activity, it targets both medical diagnostics and long-term brain-computer interfaces.
Proof that Europe’s deep tech and healthtech are still alive — and investors like Plural are betting big on hardware again.
💡 One-Liner Takeaway
Europe’s future depends on how it fuses AI, automation, and ambition, mechanizing minds as it once mechanized muscle.
Without urgency, China eats the cake. Without care, Europe burns the bakery.
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