Welcome back to another episode of Upside at the EUVC Podcast, where Dan Bowyer, Mads Jensen of SuperSeed, and Lomax Ward of Outsized Ventures go behind the headlines shaping European tech, capital, and power.

This week’s episode starts, as ever, with tech failing spectacularly, planes landing late, and VCs reminding each other they really should be doing deals. Then it gets serious.

From a billion-pound UK data center stopped in its tracks, to Davos and Mark Carney’s quietly devastating diagnosis of the global order, to Europe’s long-awaited 28th regime finally getting real momentum, this is a conversation about whether Europe can still act at scale or whether fragmentation will finish the job.

Along the way, the trio digs into China’s AI strategy, whether SaaS has quietly peaked, why defence IPOs are suddenly everywhere, and whether science in the US is really “collapsing” or just being reshuffled under Trump.

This is Upside, where optimism is earned, not assumed.

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What’s covered:

• 00:02 Mads back from the Gulf + Lomax in Nazaré

• 00:04 UK data centre blocked: what happened + why it matters

• 00:07 Fast-tracking data centres: national infrastructure vs EIAs

• 00:12 Davos standout: Mark Carney and the end of nostalgia economics

• 00:18 Middle powers and fragmentation: why Europe can’t go solo

• 00:24 AI and jobs: are entry-level roles really disappearing?

• 00:27 EU Inc / the 28th regime: momentum, labour law, and risk

• 00:34 Has China already won AI? redefining what “winning” means

• 00:43 SaaS, defence IPOs, and Europe’s capital reset