Can Italy surf the new AI wave with the new “Wave” conference? Vento CEO and partner Diyala D'Aveni unpacks this and more with Pathfounders Founder & Editor, Mike Butcher.

Pathfounders Interview: Yaroslav Azhnyuk, founder/CEO, The Fourth Law

Spain-based Mundi Ventures recently launched the Kembara Venture Fund to address this with a €750 million first close, and the ultimate target of a billion euros. Partner Pierre Festal joined Pathfounders to unpack what this means for European deeptech.

Venture capital in the MENA region is moving decisively toward AI-native platforms, which captured 69% of AI funding. The UAE and Saudi Arabia jointly attracted 87% of all AI capital deployed. Pathfounders caught up with  Philip Bahoshy, CEO of Magnitt, a key research house in MENA, to discuss how investment AI is shaping the region's tech industry.

‘Edtech’ is morphing into ‘Learning & Work’ according to a new report from Brighteye Ventures. Pathfounders caught up with report author Rhys Spence to unpack where VC investors are putting their money in Europe.

Last week, Multiverse acquired Berlin-based data and AI training provider StackFuel, a small startup that had raised only €1.5m in total, from a handful of seed investors.

Multiverse now plans to use that acquisition as a wedge into the German market, and subsequently other European markets.

In a wide-ranging conversation, I asked Founder and CEO Euan Blair what his next strategic moves would be, and why the US didn’t work out as a potential market for Multiverse's expansion a couple of years ago.

Pathfounders, Episode 1: Interview with Christian Hernandez of Climate tech VC 2150. In this interview with Pathfounders' Mike Butcher, we hear how 2150 has executed on its thesis that cities are where the battle for the climate will be won or lost.

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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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ontora — a startup from Germany which just won YC backing — is building an AI agent designed to interview every employee in a company, surface hidden knowledge, and turn that into process maps, operational insight and context that AI tools can use. Pathfounder’s Mike Butcher spoke to the founders about the tool and their YC / Bay Area experience during today’s AI boom.

Venture capital talks like it is borderless, but the reality is often far messier, especially when the flow is between Europe and the US. In this episode of the Pathfounders Podcast, Editor Mike Butcher speaks to Patrick Ryan, cofounder of Odin, about the firm’s launch of its Delaware vehicle for global investors, and how it plans to take the fight back to AngelList, Carta and Sydecar.

Competition Economist, Cristina Caffarra is chair of the EuroStack Industry Foundation, and a fierce critic of the view that the EU is doing enough to help European startups. Mike Butcher, Pathfounders editor, asked her where’s next for the European tech stack.

Sigma Squared has brought together over 1,100 young founders across local chapters spread around the world, and its members have collectively raised more than $2.5 billion in venture capital, but the organisation is not simply a talent network or investor pipeline. President Julia Zhou joined Mike Butcher on the Pathfounders Podcast to peel back the curtain on this fascinating network.

AI coding agents are making software faster to build, but it’s creating a headache for product managers, who are now the bottleneck. In this episode, Pathfounders’ Mike Butcher speaks to Emma Burrows, former Stripe UK CTO and founder of Rezonant, about why the next crisis in AI-driven software development may be the messy handoff between product managers, engineers and, now, Agentic engineers. Rezonant is now launching from stealth with a workspace designed to turn product intent into Agent-ready specs.

Pathfounders Live: With Richa Kaul, Founder & CEO of Complyance, in conversation with Pathfounders Editor Mike Butcher, followed by a live audience Q&A. 

Subjects covered during the interview and Q&A:

* Why compliance is suddenly becoming a boardroom issue

* How AI is changing governance, risk and compliance

* The hidden danger of employees using “Shadow AI” via their personal accounts

* Why third-party vendors are now one of the biggest enterprise risks

* How AI agents can monitor company risk in real time

* What the Equifax breach taught Richa Kaul about consumer data

* Why protecting consumers means protecting the companies that hold their data

* How Complyance raised a $20M Series A led by GV

* Richa’s unusual fundraising strategy, informed by a Silicon Valley playbook

* Why founders may be oversharing with VCs too early

* Whether SaaS is dead, or simply being rebuilt around AI agents

* The shift from software as a “system of record” to a “system of action”

* Why AI-native startups operate differently from traditional SaaS

* How AI is reshaping sales, engineering and implementation teams

* The future of junior jobs in an AI-powered workforce

* Why compliance teams may actually become more strategic, not less relevant

* How the EU AI Act could reshape enterprise compliance

* Why legal and compliance teams interpret regulation differently

* Why fully agentic systems still need guardrails and human judgment

* Who audits the AI — and why AI governance standards matter

* Why the future of software may be about selling outcomes, not tools

* What still does not scale in an AI-native company

* Which AI tool Richa Kaul uses personally

Thanks to our partners for supporting this event: 

Halkin Offices: For a prime address, exceptional workplace design, and award-winning customer service - all under one roof. Just contact Oliver Kingshott on oliver@halkin.com

Nebius: Nebius is building the ultimate cloud for AI, with a single platform that spans the entire AI journey — from data and model training and tuning to production runtime and deployment. To find out more please contact their team.

Energy-intensive industries like cement, glass, and steel-making are facing an energy crisis. But the software that controls their plants is ancient. AI startup Gigaton plans to catapult these laggard industries into the future, by building fully autonomous plants. CEO and co-founder Josh Vernon told Pathfounders' Editor Mike Butcher how they plan to do it.

Transition Ventures' second fund has closed at over $150M, bringing AUM to $300M. David Helgason, founding CEO of Unity Software (NYSE: U), spent two decades giving developers the tools to build virtual worlds. Now, with Transition, he's backing the founders building the physical one. He spoke to Pathfounders Editor Mike Butcher about its pivot towards rarified areas such as photonics and even small modular reactors.

Europe’s healthcare systems are still focused on sickness, not prevention, even as its population become more interested in the latter. That’s the bet of Lucis, the Paris-based preventive health startup that has just raised a $20 million Series A round led by Singular Ventures. Its playbook includes biomarker testing, longitudinal data and an AI health companion. In this interview with Pathfounders editor Mike Butcher, Lucis co-founder and CEO Max Berthelot, says they plan to use the funding expand across Europe. And recounts the first time they met…

Electronics manufacturing has failed to keep up with the speed of hardware design. Now, CircuitHub allows engineers to upload circuit board designs, get an instant quote and have finished printed circuit boards delivered in days. It means a huge acceleration for EVs, drones, or even defence systems. CEO and founder Andrew Seddon spoke to Pathfounders’ Mike Butcher about their recent $28 million VC funding round.

Mistral’s acquisition of Austrian startup Emmi AI marks a shift in Europe’s AI story, away from chatbots and into the industrial systems that underpin advanced manufacturing. Emmi builds AI models that can make engineering simulations run in seconds rather than days. Guillaume Decugis, General Partner of Serena Data Ventures, an early investor, told Pathfounders the deal was driven by commercial traction and strategic fit. For Mistral, best known as Europe’s leading LLM company, Emmi adds a vertical AI asset in the “language of physics,” hinting at where the next battleground in AI may lie.Mistral’s acquisition of Austrian startup Emmi AI marks a shift in Europe’s AI story, away from chatbots and into the industrial systems that underpin advanced manufacturing. Emmi builds AI models that can make engineering simulations run in seconds rather than days. Guillaume Decugis, General Partner of Serena Data Ventures, an early investor, told Pathfounders the deal was driven by commercial traction and strategic fit. For Mistral, best known as Europe’s leading LLM company, Emmi adds a vertical AI asset in the “language of physics,” hinting at where the next battleground in AI may lie.

Mouro Capital has hit a $400 million first close for its third fund, backed by Banco Santander, taking total commitments to more than $1 billion. In this episode, Manuel Silva Martínez, General Partner at Mouro Capital, joins Pathfounders to unpack why the firm is moving beyond the old “fintech” label and investing at the broader intersection of financial services, AI, regulation and infrastructure.Mouro Capital has hit a $400 million first close for its third fund, backed by Banco Santander, taking total commitments to more than $1 billion. In this episode, Manuel Silva Martínez, General Partner at Mouro Capital, joins Pathfounders to unpack why the firm is moving beyond the old “fintech” label and investing at the broader intersection of financial services, AI, regulation and infrastructure.

Seedcamp, one of Europe’s best-known early-stage venture firms, has raised $320 million for its next phase of investing. The firm, an early investor in Revolut, Wise, UiPath, Fluidstack and Synthesia, is also expanding its US presence and placing a bigger bet on startups operating where AI meets science, robotics and the physical world. Seedcamp partner Tom Wilson joined Mike Butcher to discuss where one of Europe’s ‘original gangster’ investors goes from here.

You might have though diversity and impact was out of fashion, but apparently it’s alive and well. And Europe has no shortage of startups claiming to make an “impact”. But what does Impact mean in 2026, which companies are genuinely worth watching? “Next Impact Europe”, is a new platform created by two investors: 4P Capital in Paris, and Impact Shakers, a VC and accelerator. They’ve unveiled an inaugural list of 50 impact startups, selected from 520 nominations across 35 countries. The initiative aims to give greater visibility, and potentially greater access to capital, to diverse founders tackling challenges ranging from climate and waste to healthcare, food and education. To discuss how the companies were selected, what “impact” really means in venture capital in 2026, and whether greater visibility can translate into investment, Mike Butcher spoke to Yonca Braeckman, founder of Impact Shakers and co-founder of Next Impact Europe.

UK startup Cosine has won UK government backing to train Lumen Sovereign, its own frontier AI model, on the Isambard-AI, the UK’s most powerful supercomputer. It will work with partners such as BT, Lloyds Banking, HSBC, BAE Systems, Thales and other major British companies and institutions, to build a frontier AI model designed to operate without dependence on foreign technology or infrastructure. Cosine co-founder Yang Li spoke to Pathfounders’ Editor Mike Butcher about their plans.

New UK startup Apoha has emerged from stealth with $36 million to build what it calls “Liquid State Intelligence” — a data layer for measuring how molecules, materials and formulations behave in the real world. The round was led by Singular, with participation from Draper Associates, Redalpine, Seedcamp, Wilbe, Nucleus and grant funding from Innovate UK.

Founded in 2021 by Shamit Shrivastava and Anshika Srivastava, Apoha is trying to fill a gap in molecular science. Researchers can already analyse a molecule’s sequence and structure. Apoha wants to measure its behaviour: how it responds to stress, liquids and real-world conditions.

Pathfounders’ Founder and Editor Mike Butcher interviewed the co-founders at SXSW London to find out their next moves.