File / Download
The Future in Focus 2026: Advancing AI
Free
A curated exploration of Europe’s frontier AI ecosystem featuring 27 startups, 7 venture capital firms and 7 AI trends pushing frontier AI beyond interfaces and into industrial systems, infrastructure and the real economy.
The Future in Focus 2026 brings together leading early-stage investors to spotlight the founders, technologies and AI trends shaping the next frontier of innovation.
The report is the result of a collaboration between Atlantic, KOMPAS VC, Lowercarbon Capital, Maze, Norrsken VC, RAISE Ventures and SET Ventures.
It focuses on AI not as hype, but as deep infrastructure reshaping energy, manufacturing, biology, robotics, photonics, climate resilience and industrial systems.
Inside the report:
27 startups to watch across Europe
7 frontier AI trends identified by leading investors
Deep dives and founder interviews
Themes across AI infrastructure, physical AI, energy, biology, chemicals, photonics and industrial intelligence
The report highlights a new generation of AI companies building around:
Proprietary data moats
Resource-efficient architectures
Explainability and governance
Autonomous systems
Industrial deployment
Real-world operational intelligence
Produced collaboratively by international venture capitalists and distributed in partnership with EUVC.
What readers will learn
Which frontier AI sectors are attracting conviction from leading VCs
How to distinguish AI wrappers from AI companies with durable product, data and infrastructure advantages.
The infrastructure bottlenecks emerging across AI
Why Europe is uniquely positioned in industrial and scientific AI
Which startups investors believe are shaping the next decade
How AI is moving from copilots into operational systems
