Pathfounders

After 16 years, the Hungarian people have ended Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian domination of society and the economy. What will this mean for its tech startup ecosystem? Pathfounders spoke to Ferenc Huszár, Founder of Reasonable (and Professor of Machine Learning, University of Cambridge), and Csongor Biás, Managing Director of Startup Hungary, to get the lowdown.

Europe isn’t short of capital, but what it lacks is coordination. That was the conclusion of Mario Draghi’s report for the EU, which highlighted an €800 billion annual innovation gap, or eight times less invested into technology than the US. So that opportunity for coordination is the motivation behind the new Renaissance Summit: a deliberately small, invitation-only gathering bringing together Europe’s top family offices, venture investors, founders and policymakers, not just to talk about Europe’s future, but to try and coordinate it. Ludolf von Schöning spoke to Pathfounders’ Mike Butcher about how this will be a long-term initiative, not just a one-off event.Europe isn’t short of capital, but what it lacks is coordination. That was the conclusion of Mario Draghi’s report for the EU, which highlighted an €800 billion annual innovation gap, or eight times less invested into technology than the US. So that opportunity for coordination is the motivation behind the new Renaissance Summit: a deliberately small, invitation-only gathering bringing together Europe’s top family offices, venture investors, founders and policymakers, not just to talk about Europe’s future, but to try and coordinate it. Ludolf von Schöning spoke to Pathfounders’ Mike Butcher about how this will be a long-term initiative, not just a one-off event.

W is a soon-to-launch European social media platform built around a simple but radical premise: no foreign ownership, and full alignment with what they describe as European values on privacy, identity, and data control.It’s led by Anna Zeiter, formerly Chief Privacy Officer and VP for Data & AI at eBay — and it arrives at a moment when trust in platforms like X is fracturing. Mike Butcher, Pathfounders Editor, dug into what her plans are for the platform.

We were told AI would make work faster and more productive. But a recent survey of 1,000 executives found corporates employees having to spend too much time checking AI outputs, leading to anxiety, and “AI burnout”. Pathfounders spokes to William Tunstall-Pedoe, founder and CEO of UnlikelyAI, which commissioned the survey, to unpack what might be going on, and where we go next.

So-called ‘corporate reputation’ can account for as much as 30% of its market value in large public companies but the systems used to monitor and protect that are hugely fragmented. Omniscient, is a Paris-based startup that has built an AI-driven platform to asses that value, something the the big consultancies normally charge millions for. Co-founder and CEO Arnaud d'Estienne spoke to Pathfounders’ Mike Butcher.

With both the rise of AI and, of course, a potential oil crisis looming as a result of the war in the Middle East, energy is now the defining battleground of this half of the decade. Could power from space be the answer? TerraSpark has just raised over €5 million in pre-seed funding. Pathfounders' Mike Butcher spoke to co-founder and CEO Jasper Deprez about both the sheer logistics, but also the potential for the new form of energy.

Granola started out as a note-taking app for meetings, but like all great startup Trojan Horses, it’s becoming a full-blown enterprise platform. After raising a $125 million Series C at a $1.5 billion valuation this week, Pathfounders’ Mike Butcher caught up with co-founder Sam Stephenson to find out what its next moves are.

For the last few years, AI has often been about one model to understand language, another to generate images, another to handle video. To tackle this, Luma AI has just launched Uni-1: what it calls a “unified intelligence model.” The idea, says the company is to be not just another image generator, and in fact, might be posed to power Hollywood. Speaking to Pathfounders' Mike Butcher, Jason Day, head of EMEA for Luma AI, unpacked the where he thinks AI for creatives is heading next.

A new report from the European VC redalpine (with Sifted) argues that Europe’s next wave will not come from copying Silicon Valley consumer internet playbooks, but from sectors where Europe has genuine structural advantages: intelligent enterprise, digital health, new energy, space, biology and robotics. But can Europe capitalise on these? One of the report’s Sebastian becker, general partner at reldapine, joined Pathfounders Editor Mike Butcher to discuss its findings.

Is Europe's ‘tech bro renaissance’ really happening, or is AI about to level the game for women? Recently the European tech world has been debating both the apparent - to some eyes - rise of a more masculine culture in the industry in the shape of (to take one example) the male domination of hackathons, in contrast to the continued paucity of female participation in the industry, across all areas of sectors. But does this debate mask what is really happening underneath the culture wars? Pathfounders Editor Mike Butcher spoke to Agata Nowicka of Female Foundry for Pathfounders about her recent survey of 1,000 women founders.

Europe is facing a 6 trillion Euro infrastructure transformation over the next decade, with over €2 trillion already committed. But that leaves a leaving a €4 trillion private capital gap. At the same time intelligence warnings suggesting Russia could invade NATO territory some time before 2029, putting Europe’s defence systems are under massive pressure. So could infrastructure be the next big category for VC and startups? Pathfounders’ Editor Mike Butcher spoke to Nikolas Zamios, Partner with Berlin-based VC PT1, to unpack the issues.

AI is leaving the chat window and entering the real world, showing up in factories, energy systems and in construction sites. This is the new era of Physical AI. UK-based VC fund SuperSeed is betting big on this next era with a new fund, which has just hit a first close of $50m. Pathfounders’ Mike Butcher spke to Dan Bowyer, co-founder of SuperSeed, about why he thinks will be a big arena for the next wave of AI startups.

Yesterday something big happened in Europe. The EU Commission is putting its weight behind a proposal to create a cross-EU company structure (similar to a Delaware Corp) dubbed “EU Inc”. In fact, that idea and the name emerged from a lobby group made up of founders and investors literally called EU Inc. However, EU President Ursula von der Leyen has, so far, stopped short of fulfilling all the wishes of the movement. Pathfounders’s Mike Butcher caught up with Andreas Klinger, founder of Protoype Capital, an EU Inc co-organiser, to discuss the latest developments.

Clinical trials for new drugs involve some of the most expensive and complex processes in modern industry yet, remarkably, much of the infrastructure still runs on spreadsheets and manual reviews. AI has begun to flood into this sector, but the question is which startups can seize the opportunity to reduce costs and speed up this sector? Erik Scalfaro, CEO and Co-Founder of Rivia, thinks they have the answer, and joined Mike Butcher of Pathfounders to discuss their $15M Series A funding round.

Can you leverage media and community into an early start startup funding platform? That’s the bet that UK-based OPUS plans to make with its international membership network of founders and operators. The project, dubbed Day Zero, will be a venture investment platform aimed at backing technology startups from their earliest days across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, combining capital from individual investors with access to the OPUS network. Mike Butcher of Pathfounders spoke to OPUS founder Sam Tidswell-Norrish about how they think they can make it work, and where it might end up.

Cross-border commerce has never been larger, but for companies trying to sell internationally, it has rarely been more complicated. London-based Outpost has raised a $17.5 million Series A round to help companies sell across borders without building an expensive patchwork of legal entities. CEO Will Mahon-Heap unpacks his strategy with Mike Butcher, Founder & Editor of Pathfounders.

Component manufacturing is a trillion-dollar-a-year market, but in Europe it’s an area dominated by small, often family-run businesses that are rapidly dwindling as the owners retire. Isembard is a UK startup that manufactures high-precision components, operating both its own, and franchisee factories. Following its $50 million Series A funding, Mike Butcher of Pathfounders caught up with Alexander Fitzgerald, Isembard Founder and CEO.

Dr Ari Kristinn Jónsson has just stepped into the newly created role of President of the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), the €1 billion venture fund backed by 24 NATO countries to invest in technologies that strengthen defence, security, and resilience across the alliance. Pathfounders caught up with him to unpack how he plans to steady the NIF ship after a turbulent period. Correction: In the video, we say Dr Ari Kristinn Jónsson replaced Klaus Hommels at head of NIF. Hommels has Klaus stepped into a new advisory role at the Fund’s Geopolitical and Strategic Advisory Council, focused on providing the NIF with guidance on industrialisation and scaling challenges. Dr Jónsson's role as President is a new one, and he will be reporting to the NIF Board.

Qevlar AI says it can deploy AI to turn alerts about cybersecurity attacks into data that was previously invisible. Pathfounder’s Mike Butcher speaks to Ahmed Achchak, Qevlar AI Co-Founder and CEO, and Damien Henault, partner with Forgepoint Capital, about how AI is changing cybersecurity.

Speaking at the inaugural Pathfounders London Mixer — the first in a series — a panel of VCs and experts tackled the thorny subjects of the white-hot era of AI, what’s next for deeptech, and the future of so-called ‘sovereign’ technologies — all amid the background of, at times, quite chaotic geopolitical tensions. The panel also identified a new generation of AI-native entrepreneurs, operating in palpably different ways from the generation that came before them. Featuring: •⁠ ⁠Sitar Teli, Managing Partner, Connect Ventures•⁠ ⁠Alex van Someren, recently exited as the UK's Chief Scientific Adviser for National Security and former VC •⁠ ⁠⁠Manjari Chandran-Ramesh, Amadeus Capital Partners, Partner in the Early Stage Fund focusing on AI, Robotics and Quantum•⁠ ⁠⁠ Ana Barjasic, Connectology, European Innovation Council