Benevolent Disruptors

In this episode of the Benevolent Disruptors Interview Series Benevolent we were joined by Mehdi Ghisassi pioneer of product at Google DeepMind, the first PM on Google Gemini and now spinning out AI71 where he helps governments and companies build their own AI stacks. 

Throughout our conversation we cover:

An end of an era for protected research sanctuaries inside Big Tech - how DeepMind proved that if you give brilliant researchers and engineers an ambitious goal and real resources extraordinary progress can follow. 

The premium of the DeepMind Diaspora - how concentration of talent has dissipated into new ventures from Mistral, to Frontier AI labs, to Orbital Materials

Unreaslist expectations around sovereign AI - Governments and enterprises talk about it constantly, but full sovereignty isn't realistic for anyone. The more useful question is which parts of the stack do you build vs buy?

👉 Learn more at  https://www.benevolentdisruptors.com/

In this episode of the Benevolent Disruptors Interview Series we were very pleased to welcome Vincent Koc, Chief Architect from The Open Claw Foundation to explore what’s at the frontier of personal AI agents. Throughout our conversation we get into:

• Dark Factories where agents build software with minimal human involvement
• Why the human in the loop may be the wrong framing; the case for portable
• Open AI infrastructure
• What happens when 60 agents work simultaneously; 
• Why the interface between humans and agents could become one of the most interesting design problems of the next decade

👉 Learn more at https://www.benevolentdisruptors.com/ 

In this episode of the Benevolent Disruptors Interview Series, we welcome Jack Zhang,  CEO and Co-Founder of Airwallex, the global financial infrastructure company processing $60B+ in annualised transaction volume across 200,000 businesses in over 200 countries, built not from Silicon Valley, but from a Melbourne coffee shop.

Jack turned down a billion-dollar acquisition offer from Stripe, survived COVID, and spent a decade quietly doing the hardest things in fintech, obtaining licenses in 70+ markets, integrating with 80+ banks, and building what is effectively the next-generation global bank for entrepreneurs. His philosophy? Take the path of maximum resistance. It's working.

The conversation covers why starting outside the Valley was Airwallex's biggest advantage, how a single hiring philosophy shift changed everything, and why the AI era will produce two or three financial operating system winners, and Airwallex intends to be one of them.

Key Takeaways:

• Why turning down Stripe's billion-dollar offer forced Airwallex to think at a completely different scale
• How ditching experience-based hiring for competency and first-principles thinking transformed the company's culture and trajectory
• Why Airwallex's Asia Pacific profit engine funded its rapid expansion into Europe and North America
• The realist case on stablecoins: even 10% of the $7 trillion daily FX market moving on-chain would be a trillion dollars a day, but 90% remains fiat, and that's the real problem to solve
• Why agentic payments will run through regulated wallets, with AI agents transacting via stablecoin as a universal currency
• Jack's 2030 vision: 1 million customers, $20K revenue per customer, $20 billion top line

👉 Learn more at https://www.benevolentdisruptors.com/

In this episode of the Benevolent Disruptors Interview Series, we welcome Michiel Scheffer, President of the Board at the European Innovation Council (EIC). The EIC is the European Union's flagship innovation body, deploying a €1.4 billion annual budget across the continent's most daring technology investments, from quantum computing and AI to biorefinery and fusion. 

A founder, innovation investor, minister, professor, and author of over 100 publications, Michiel has been nominated as the best regional politician in the Netherlands and has seen Europe's innovation landscape from almost every possible angle. Under his leadership, the EIC supports beneficiaries across 27 EU member states plus Norway, Switzerland, the UK, and Israel, with an underlying portfolio of more than 800 companies. 

The conversation explores why Europe punches above its weight in producing unicorn founders but struggles to capture their scaled value, how fragmentation across 27 countries creates both barriers and opportunities, and why the next decade of AI, quantum, and defence tech could be Europe's to lose… or to win. 

Michiel unpacks the EIC's new €5 billion scale-up fund, why European capital markets urgently need reform, and how the continent's industrial backbone, research translation, and dual-use defence capabilities position it for a new era of "Benevolent Disruption." 

Key Takeaways: 

• Why 24% of the world's unicorn founders are European yet only 6% of global unicorn enterprise value is captured in Europe (and why scaling, not starting, is Europe's real challenge) 
• How the EIC's €5 billion scale-up fund, built alongside pension funds, foundations, and insurers, is designed to plug Europe's late-stage capital gap 
• Why Europeans invest €800 billion a year into the US while their own start-ups remain under-capitalised, and what a Capital Savings Union could unlock. 
• How Europe is quietly leading in industrial AI, health diagnostics AI, and causal (rather than purely correlational) model design, with companies in fusion, predictive maintenance, and medical imaging already reshaping productivity 
• Why the EIC's three-founder requirement (CTO, seasoned CEO, and CFO) reflects a distinctly European philosophy of collective, scale-ready team building from day one 
• How Ukraine has become Europe's most important live learning environment for dual-use defence technology, with 40+ EIC-funded projects drawing lessons for the continent's strategic autonomy 
• Why quantum companies like IQM (Finland) and Pascal (France) heading to NASDAQ signal both progress and a lingering gap in European capital market depth 
• Michiel’s conviction that entrepreneurs, academics, and politicians must stop judging each other and start listening: the foundation of real, long-term innovation policy 

👉 Learn more at https://www.benevolentdisruptors.com/ 

In this episode of the Benevolent Disruptors Interview Series, we welcome David Clark, CIO of VenCap International plc. Founded in 1987, VenCap is one of the longest-standing and most successful fund-of-funds investment firms in Venture Capital.   

Having committed over $3 billion across 500+ VC funds, David reflects on how VenCap evolved from a traditional LP into a data-driven, conviction-led platform, focused on backing the top 5% of venture managers: the "unicorn hunters".  

 
Today, their underlying portfolio reads like a who's who of the defining companies of our era, including groundbreaking companies like OpenAI, Spotify, NVIDIA and Stripe. 

The conversation explores why a small fraction of companies continue to generate the bulk of venture returns, how AI is poised to concentrate the power law even further, and what it means for LPs trying to position themselves on the right side of that divide. 

David unpacks VenCap's core manager thesis, why operating from Oxford rather than Silicon Valley has been a strategic advantage, and how the firm's collaboration with BNVT Capital on our ‘Benevolent Disruption’ investment thesis is reshaping the conversation around “impact” in venture. 

Key Takeaways: 

• Why roughly 30 companies a year account for over 50% of all value generated by the global VC industry and how AI could make that concentration even more extreme 
• How VenCap's shift to a data-driven "core manager" strategy in the mid-2000s dramatically improved performance while virtually eliminating left-tail risk 
• David's take on whether mega-fund sizes are sustainable and how full-stack AI-native companies are becoming the vertical, not just selling software  
• What VenCap learned from 30+ years of manager selection: that LPs aren't the heroes, founders are  
• Why being based in Oxford, outside the Silicon Valley bubble, insulates VenCap from hype cycles and supports more rational, long-term allocation decisions 
• How VenCap's collaboration with BNVT emerged from a shared belief that traditional ESG reporting doesn't fit the reality of early-stage venture 

👉 Learn more at https://www.benevolentdisruptors.com/ 

In this episode, Chris speaks with Sam Atkinson, CEO and Co-Founder of Swap: one of BNVT Capital's earliest investments and now a global agentic e-commerce platform powering over 1,000 brands like Paul Smith, Cubitts and Sirplus. Sam reflects on building Swap from a small London team focused on returns management into a full operating system for cross-border commerce, and why the company's boldest chapter is just beginning. 

The conversation explores how solving one of the hardest problems in e-commerce cross-border returns gave Swap the foundation to expand into payments, shipping, customs, demand forecasting, and tax compliance. Sam unpacks the launch of Swap's Agentic Storefront, why Shopify remains a partner even as Swap carves out its own lane, and what it took to scale a UK-born platform into a US-led growth story:  with $120M in projected annualized revenue and a $100M Series C from Iconic and DST to fuel what comes next. 

Key Takeaways: 

• How starting with cross-border returns gave Swap the credibility and infrastructure to build a full e-commerce operating system 
• What the Agentic Storefront is, why it's unlike anything else on the market, and how it opens up an entirely new customer base in North America 
• Why Swap views Shopify as a long-term partner — and where the two diverge on the front-end experience 
• How Sam's experience running his own e-commerce brand and working at McKinsey and Swedish neobank Juni shaped Swap's product vision 
• What it took to scale from the UK to a global operation with nearly 50% of revenue now in the US 
• Why hiring close friends as early employees was one of Sam's best decisions — and how his wife Jean keeps him grounded through it all 
• Sam's take on the benevolent vs. disruptor question: "We need to do the disrupting first to be able to be benevolent" 

👉 Learn more at https://www.benevolentdisruptors.com/ 

In this episode, Rory Mounsey-Heysham speaks with Nigel Morris, Managing Partner at QED Investors and co-founder of Capital One. Nigel reflects on four decades in financial services, his ambition to impact over one billion people through fintech, and why he believes innovation in finance is still in its early innings.

The conversation explores how Capital One democratized credit through risk-based pricing, why fintech continues to take share from incumbents, and where the next decade of disruption may come from across stablecoins, open banking, AI, and digital-native banking models. Nigel also shares hard-won lessons from building QED into one of the world’s leading fintech venture firms.

Key Takeaways

• Why Nigel’s goal to impact one billion lives shapes his investment philosophy
• How Capital One used data and risk-based pricing to expand access to credit
• Why fintech is still a small share of a $14 trillion market and growing faster than incumbents
• Where fintech already dominates, from remittances to earned wage access and neo-banks
• How stablecoins and open banking could reshape deposits and cross-border payments
• Why venture capital is about brand, power-law outcomes, and backing generational founders

👉 Subscribe to Benevolent Disruptors for more conversations with founders building enduring companies by solving deep systemic problems

👉 Learn more at https://www.benevolentdisruptors.com/

In this episode, Rory speaks with Andrew L. Cohen, Executive Chairman of J.P. Morgan’s Global Private Bank and leader of 23 Wall, J.P. Morgan’s Institutional Wealth Management practice serving many of the world’s most influential families and institutions. Drawing on insights from J.P. Morgan’s Principals Report and decades at the heart of global finance, Andrew offers a rare perspective on how capital is allocated, how risk is understood, and how the world’s most powerful decision-makers think about the future.

The conversation explores why geopolitics has become the defining risk for global families, the accelerating shift from public to private markets, and the rise of direct investing with governance involvement. Rory and Andrew also unpack the realities of AI adoption beyond the hype, the traits that distinguish resilient multi-generational families, the growing role of sport as an asset class, and why benevolent capital and disruption must work together to drive long-term progress in an increasingly complex world.

Key Takeaways

1. How global families are using capital to shape markets, not just access them
2. Why geopolitics is now the single biggest risk facing wealthy families
3. What the shift from public to private markets means for founders and investors
4. Why direct investing with governance involvement is accelerating
5. How multi-generational operating experience adds unique value to growth companies
6. Where AI adoption is creating real advantage and where it still lags
7. What differentiates resilient multi-generational families
8. Why governance, communication, and shared values matter as complexity grows
9. How sports has become a fast-growing global asset class
10. Why innovation is increasingly global, not geographically confined
11. How benevolence and disruption can coexist as forces for good

👉 Subscribe to Benevolent Disruptors for more conversations with founders, investors, and thinkers turning big problems into better business.

👉 Check out more about Benevolent Disruption here: https://www.benevolentdisruptors.com/

In this episode, Chris Corbishley speaks with Jodok Betschart, co-founder and CEO of Cloover, one of BNVT Capital’s earliest investments. Cloover has announced a $1.2B financing commitment to scale a new kind of software-led renewable energy infrastructure across Europe. The conversation covers Cloover’s breakout year, including around 8x revenue growth while remaining profitable, and why energy independence is becoming a critical consumer need as grids strain and household costs rise.

Jodok explains Cloover’s mission to connect 1 billion people to renewable energy by making installations accessible through simple monthly payments and by empowering local SME installers, not replacing them. Chris and Jodok explore why climate and energy investing is regaining momentum, why many climate tech startups fail when software-style expectations collide with physical infrastructure, and how Cloover’s asset-light platform model reduces risk while accelerating adoption.

Key Takeaways

1. Why Cloover’s mission is energy independence at mass-market affordability
2. How local installers sit at the centre of the energy transition
3. What has shifted to unlock more institutional capital for clean energy in Europe
4. Why many climate tech startups fail when venture logic meets infrastructure reality
5. How an asset-light platform model enables faster, lower-risk scaling
6. Why culture, commitment, and execution matter as much as technology

👉 Subscribe to Benevolent Disruptors for more conversations with founders building enduring companies by solving deep systemic problems

👉 Learn more at https://www.benevolentdisruptors.com/

In this episode, Chris Corbishley speaks with Thomas Wolf, co-founder and Chief Science Officer of Hugging Face, the open-source AI platform now powering millions of models and researchers worldwide. Thomas shares the unlikely origins of the company from a teen chatbot to the central hub of the global machine learning community sparked by a research codebase for BERT and GPT-2 that unexpectedly went viral and reshaped the company’s trajectory.

He discusses how Hugging Face now incubates internal “mini-startups” across open science, small on-device models, robotics and AI for science, and how this mirrors his work angel-investing in over 100 AI companies. The conversation explores the cultural differences between European and US founders, the importance of mission and openness, the limitations of today’s large language models, and why Thomas believes multiple research paths, not just those pursued by frontier labs, are essential for the field’s long-term progress.

Key Takeaways

• How Hugging Face evolved from a teen chatbot into the backbone of the global open-source AI ecosystem
• Why an open-sourced research codebase for BERT and GPT-2 became the catalyst for a full company pivot
• How Hugging Face incubates internal “startups” such as BigScience, small on-device models, robotics, and AI for science
• Why Thomas believes mission, culture, and long-term orientation are essential and how they emerged over time rather than being predetermined
• How European founders can overcome self-censorship and think bigger, and why Thomas encourages a more American-style approach to ambition
• Why he sees AI as a dual-use technology, the limitations of current LLMs, and the importance of multiple research paths beyond today’s frontier labs
• How regulatory cycles swing between under- and over-correction, and why this matters for innovators
• Where Thomas sits on the spectrum between benevolent and disruptor—and how that shapes his work today

👉 Subscribe to Benevolent Disruptors for more conversations with the founders and thinkers turning big problems into better business.

👉 Check out more about Benevolent Disruption here: https://www.benevolentdisruptors.com/