Where European tech is heading

Meet the first EUVC Summit speakers, and why Europe is shifting from efficiency to ownership

Apr 06, 2026

Hi friends,

As the EUVC Summit approaches on April 22, we’re spotlighting a first group of speakers. They aren’t just observing European tech, they’re actively shaping it.

From Sonali De Rycker (Accel), who backed Spotify and Monzo, to Staffan Helgesson (Creandum), an early believer in Spotify and Klarna, the VC lineup reflects decades of conviction investing at the highest level. Alongside them, James Dacombe (CoMind and OLIX) is pushing the frontier of neurotechnology, while Dave Bailey (Founder Coach/Delivery Hero) brings hard-earned lessons from scaling companies and now coaching founders and CEOs.

If you’re interested in where European tech is heading and want to hear how people who actively build and back companies think, join us.

Evolution also sits at the centre of this week’s EUVC podcast episodes. Jessica Persson (Scania) shares how corporate venture is becoming less of a side initiative and more of a core capability, especially when navigating long-term bets where strategic and financial outcomes increasingly overlap.

Cameron McLain (Giant Ventures) makes a broader case for European tech: after decades of optimising for efficiency, the focus is shifting toward ownership and resilience. The real opportunity now lies in building and owning critical parts of the stack.

Hope you enjoy,
with 💖
David & Andreas

Fund Modelling in VC: Fund Returner Workshop

Virtual | Wednesday, April 8 | 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM GMT

This session builds on concepts introduced in previous fund modelling sessions. It is fully valuable as a standalone workshop for experienced operators, with a strong focus on practical application, decision-making trade-offs and real-world fund construction dynamics.

Get your ticket now

Podcasts of the Week

Serving Europe’s Builders with Live Interviews

Interloom Wants to Give AI Agents Something They’ve Always Lacked: Memory

Events and Community Gatherings

Podcasts of the Week

Jessica Persson, Scania on Why Most Corporate VCs Are Built for a World That No Longer Exists

Corporate venture capital is undergoing a quiet reset.

For years, it was built for a world of software, speed and optional innovation. Today, that world has shifted towards deep tech, industrial systems and global complexity. In this environment, many traditional CVC models start to break down.

In this EU CVC episode, Jessica Persson (Scania) joins Jeppe Høier and Andreas Munk Holm to explain how corporate venture is evolving from a side function into a core capability for navigating uncertainty.

Key takeaways:

Outsourced CVC breaks down in deep tech
Venture is now about bits and atoms
Strategic and financial returns are the same

If venture isn’t embedded in the core business, it’s not a strategy.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or queue it up with chapter markers ready to go.

Cameron McLain, Giant Ventures on Why Europe Needs to Own the Stack

For the past 20 years, Europe optimised for efficiency. That worked until it didn’t.

In this episode, Cameron McLain (Giant Ventures) argues we’re entering a new phase where the question is no longer what Europe can build, but what it must own.

Because if you don’t own the stack, you rent your economy.

Key insights:

The best founders are “missionaries,” not opportunists
The world is shifting from efficiency to resilience
If you don’t build the stack, you rent it
This is a venture opportunity, not ideology
Europe’s edge is applied technology

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or queue it up with chapter markers ready to go.

This Week in European Tech with Dan Bowyer, Lomax Ward and Andrew J Scott

In this episode of Upside, Dan Bowyer (SuperSeed), Lomax Ward (Outsized Ventures) and Andrew J Scott (7percent Ventures) unpack a week where Europe’s ambitions in AI and defence are colliding with reality.

Mistral raises $830 million to build sovereign AI infrastructure, while Poolside’s $2 billion round collapses after losing access to compute. At the same time, UK defence tech founders are leaving—not because of funding gaps, but because procurement isn’t keeping pace.

Across all of this, one theme stands out: Europe isn’t short on capital or talent. It’s struggling to convert both into execution.

Key insights:

Compute is now a strategic dependency, not a commodity
Europe’s bottleneck sits in procurement and deployment, not early funding
AI infrastructure is becoming vertically integrated out of necessity
Defence tech is constrained by slow decision-making, not lack of demand
Trust and control are emerging as competitive advantages in regulated sectors

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or queue it up with chapter markers ready to go.

Interloom Wants to Give AI Agents Something They’ve Always Lacked: Memory

AI agents are getting smarter but in the enterprise, they still forget everything that actually matters.

Fresh off Interloom’s $16.5 million seed round led by DN Capital, with Bek Ventures and Air Street Capital participating, founder Fabian Jakobi joined Andreas for a live interview to unpack why AI keeps falling short in real-world operations.

The problem? Most critical knowledge isn’t written down—it lives in the heads of experts. Interloom captures how work actually gets done, turning real decisions into a persistent “memory layer” for AI agents. The result: systems that don’t just automate tasks, but learn, adapt, and improve with every case.