Welcome back to another episode of Upside where Dan Bowyer and Mads Jensen of SuperSeed go behind the headlines shaping European tech, capital, and power.
This week we’re joined by Eyal Malinger, co-founder of Resurge Growth Partners, to unpack a genuinely strange week in global tech.
China unveils humanoid robots that look disturbingly battlefield-ready. Anthropic tries to draw moral lines in defence AI. Peter Steinberger leaves Europe almost as fast as he went viral. Munich becomes less “security conference” and more “Europe, wake up.” And in the background, billion-dollar AI seed rounds and quantum mega-funds quietly signal that the frontier is accelerating again.
This isn’t just a tech cycle.
It feels like a systems cycle.
This is Upside, where optimism is earned, not assumed.
What’s covered:
02:10 China’s humanoid robot moment: hardware dominance meets AI brains
06:20 Battlefield AI and the ethics problem Anthropic can’t avoid
14:00 Raspberry Pi, edge AI, and Europe’s accidental meme stock
20:30 Anthropic vs Palantir: moral lines vs deterrence logic
25:10 Peter Steinberger leaves Europe — ecosystem gravity in action
31:00 AI inside venture: workflow automation vs real alpha
43:00 Munich Security Conference: defence budgets, sovereignty, and Stark vs Thiel
52:10 Psychedelics and glucose monitors: Europe’s quiet biotech strength
55:30 Quantum funds and Europe’s billion-dollar AI seed round
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and if you’re building in defence, AI, or deep tech, this one’s worth queueing with chapter markers.
China’s Humanoid Robot Shock
We opened the episode with the Spring Festival footage.
Because once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Rows of humanoid robots moving in sync, smiling faces on national TV, framed not as experimental tech but as a cultural celebration. It wasn’t positioned as “look at this prototype.” It was positioned as normal. Integrated. Ready.
And that’s what stuck with us.
In China, things don’t accidentally end up on prime-time state television. That kind of exposure is deliberate. It signals maturity. Or at least the intention to project it.
What’s happening underneath that surface is even more important.
Humanoid hardware costs are dropping fast. Actuators are cheaper. Supply chains are domestic. Iteration cycles are tighter. China already leads global humanoid shipments by volume, even if the market is still early.
Small numbers. Steep curve.
And then the question that hung in the air:
If this is what they’re comfortable showing on TV… what are they not showing?
The public layer of technology is rarely the cutting edge. It’s the stable layer. The controlled layer. The part that’s ready for mass optics.
Behind closed doors, development tends to run ahead.
And this isn’t just about warehouse labor or elder care robots.
This is deterrence math.
For decades, escalation thresholds have been shaped by human cost. Democracies hesitate when young soldiers are at risk. Public opinion acts as friction.
But autonomous systems change that equation.
If deploying force means deploying machines rather than people, the political barrier shifts. Not disappears but shifts.
That’s destabilizing in subtle ways.
We kept coming back to the split in the stack:
The brain — frontier AI models, chips, research — still largely American-led.
The metal — manufacturing scale, embodied systems, physical robotics — increasingly Chinese.
Software intelligence versus physical leverage.
And Europe?
Watching. Commenting. Regulating.
But not yet moving at the same speed.
Anthropic, Palantir & The Ethics Tension
This part of the conversation got uncomfortable in a good way.
Anthropic has been clear: they don’t want their models used for autonomous kill decisions.
It’s principled. It’s morally coherent. It sounds right.
But deterrence isn’t built on vibes.
Eyal pushed on this: what happens if your adversary doesn’t adopt the same guardrails? What happens if they don’t publish ethical blog posts?
Palantir’s position is almost the opposite tone. Less philosophical. More pragmatic.
Technological superiority prevents war.
Their argument is simple: peace comes from strength. If you hesitate while others advance, you don’t get moral credit — you get strategic vulnerability.
So the real tension becomes:
Can you accept defence contracts, sell into national security infrastructure, take government money and still claim clean separation from military application?
Is that sustainable? Or is it branding gymnastics?
We’re no longer in abstract AI ethics debates.
This is procurement-level real. Budgets are expanding. Contracts are being signed. AI is embedding into defense infrastructure now.
Every frontier model company will have to decide where it stands, not in theory, but in paperwork.
Talent Gravity: Another One Leaves
Then we talked about Peter Steinberger moving to OpenAI.
And it felt symbolic.
Another high-caliber European technical founder pulled almost instantly into the US ecosystem.
This keeps happening.
It’s easy to say “Europe needs more capital.”
But that’s not the full story.
It’s about compute access.
It’s about regulatory drag.
It’s about ambition density.
It’s about proximity to the frontier.
Founders don’t just chase money. They chase velocity.
If you’re building at the edge of AI research, being plugged directly into the most advanced cluster, the most aggressive roadmap, the fastest-moving org — that matters.
The US still offers unmatched scale and optionality.
Until Europe can offer not just funding, but equivalent speed and platform gravity, the talent pull west will continue.
This isn’t emotional. It’s structural.
AI Inside Venture: Hygiene or Edge?
We shifted gears into venture.
David Stark open-sourced his AI-powered VC workflow — automated notes, CRM syncing, meeting summaries.
It’s slick.
And it sparked a bigger debate: is this edge, or just table stakes?
Automation is powerful. It saves time. It reduces admin. It improves organization.
But does it win you the deal?
Probably not.
Competitive deals are still won on brand trust, founder relationships, reputation, niche credibility, physical presence in ecosystems.
AI can summarize a meeting.
It can’t build a decade-long reputation.
What’s happening instead is bifurcation.
On one side: massive platform funds with global brands and billion-dollar war chests.
On the other: hyper-focused micro-VCs with tight theses and strong community roots.
The middle — mid-sized, generalist, not-quite-platform funds — looks squeezed.
AI increases operational hygiene.
It doesn’t manufacture differentiation.
Munich: Sovereignty Gets Real
The Munich Security Conference felt heavier this year.
Less theoretical discussion about “strategic autonomy.” More concrete budget numbers.
Germany’s defense budget potentially hitting €115B. The UK accelerating toward 3% of GDP.
But sovereignty is expanding beyond tanks and jets.
It’s reaching cap tables.
When a German defense startup backed by American capital faces political discomfort, the subtext is clear:
Who ultimately controls strategic infrastructure?
The US has always been strict about foreign ownership in sensitive sectors.
Europe is only now grappling with similar questions.
Strategic autonomy isn’t just about building systems.
It’s about who owns them.
And that’s a much harder conversation.
Europe’s Biotech Bright Spots
We didn’t want the episode to be pure geopolitics.
Because Europe is still delivering.
Compass Pathways’ Phase III psilocybin results are genuinely meaningful. Treatment-resistant depression is one of the hardest problems in psychiatry.
Sano Health’s continuous glucose monitor data is another reminder that European healthtech remains strong.
The science is there.
The research base is there.
The challenge remains scaling and keeping the upside.
Too often, the innovation originates here — but the commercial dominance ends up elsewhere.
Quantum & The Billion-Dollar Seed
Then came the capital story.
QuantoNation launching what looks like Europe’s largest dedicated quantum fund.
And NF4 raising up to $1B at a $4B valuation.
A billion-dollar seed round in Europe.
That would’ve sounded absurd a few years ago.
So yes — the ecosystem is maturing.
But it’s also concentrating.
Capital flows heavily to perceived generational frontier bets. Below that, competition is brutal.
This is what a maturing ecosystem looks like: more capital, but more unevenly distributed.
Closing Reflection
What tied the whole episode together was this:
AI isn’t just another software cycle.
It’s reshaping deterrence.
It’s reshaping venture economics.
It’s reshaping sovereignty conversations.
It’s reshaping where talent flows.
Europe is more aware than before.
Budgets are rising. Funds are larger. Conversations are sharper.
But awareness doesn’t equal execution.
Speed does.
And the open question we kept circling back to:
In a world where power is compounding exponentially, who can actually move fast enough to matter?
