EUVC

Europe's challenge isn't a lack of entrepreneurs. It's making sure enough capital reaches them.

In this episode, David Cruz e Silva speaks with Jaap Vriesendorp, Managing Partner at Marktlink Capital, one of Europe's most active LPs in venture capital, about why backing European innovation matters, how to build a resilient venture portfolio and what separates the best fund managers from the rest.

Jaap shares the thinking behind Marktlink's venture strategy, from vintage diversification and secondaries to manager selection and portfolio construction.

He also explains why scale matters in private markets, how the firm uses data science and AI in its investment process and why many LPs make the mistake of running out of capital for their best-performing managers.

The conversation also covers emerging managers, long-term capital formation and why Europe deserves more credit as a venture ecosystem.

Key highlights:

• Why European entrepreneurs should back European entrepreneurs
• How one of Europe's most active VC LPs approaches venture investing
• The role of primaries, secondaries and vintage diversification
• What Jaap looks for in emerging managers
• Why scale matters in private markets
• How data science and AI support investment decisions
• The biggest mistakes fund-of-funds investors make
• Why long-term capital is critical to venture success

Timestamps:

• (00:00) Why Europe needs more capital flowing into innovation
• (02:00) Introduction and Jaap Vriesendorp's background
• (05:00) From McKinsey to launching a venture fund-of-funds
• (08:00) The merger that created Marktlink Capital
• (10:00) Building a platform backed by entrepreneurs
• (14:00) Why scale matters in private markets
• (17:00) Product strategy across venture, private equity, co-investments and private credit
• (23:00) How Marktlink uses data science and AI in investing
• (29:00) Marktlink's venture investment strategy
• (30:00) Vintage diversification, primaries and secondaries
• (33:00) Why annual funds help secure long-term LP capital
• (37:00) What Marktlink looks for in emerging venture managers
• (40:00) Why Europe deserves more credit as a venture ecosystem

Further listening:

⁠⁠⁠E347: The $26B CIO Who Turned Superforecasting Into Alpha - How I Invest with David Weisburd⁠⁠⁠

Learn more about the Love Tomorrow Summit and the programmes EUVC is curating, and secure your tickets here.

Quantum computing has spent decades being "just around the corner".

Now quantum companies are raising record rounds, heading to public markets and moving closer to commercial adoption.

In the latest episode of This Week in European Tech, Mads Jensen of SuperSeed is joined by Andrew J. Scott, Managing Partner at 7percent Ventures, and Callum Stewart, Principal at BullhoundCapital, to discuss why quantum may finally be reaching an inflection point.

The conversation explores BullhoundCapital's investment in Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC), when quantum advantage could become commercially meaningful, why quantum sensing may arrive before large-scale quantum computing and what Europe's position could be in the next wave of deep tech.

They also discuss sovereign AI, Anthropic's latest model release, AI infrastructure, Britain's technology strategy and the biggest stories shaping European tech this week.

Topics covered

• Why quantum may be closer to commercial adoption than many investors think
• The investment thesis behind OQC
• Quantum computing versus quantum sensing
• Europe's opportunity in quantum and deep tech
• Sovereign AI and frontier models
• Anthropic's latest release and the future of AI infrastructure
• The UK's approach to AI chips, compute and technology sovereignty

Timestamps

• (00:00) Introduction and today's agenda
• (03:00) SpaceX's IPO and the impact on venture
• (08:00) OpenAI, Anthropic and the AI race
• (16:00) Why quantum is reaching an inflection point
• (18:00) The investment case for Oxford Quantum Circuits
• (20:00) When quantum computing becomes commercially useful
• (25:00) Quantum sensing and the next wave of applications
• (31:00) Anthropic's new model and AI safety
• (41:00) Europe's AI regulation dilemma
• (46:00) Britain's sovereign AI ambitions
• (54:00) The UK's AI infrastructure strategy
• (01:05:00) European tech deals of the week
• (01:08:00) The week ahead in European tech

Learn more about the Love Tomorrow Summit and the programmes EUVC is curating, and secure your tickets here.

How do you build a €3.5 billion private markets platform in Europe?

⁠David Cruz e Silva⁠ speaks with ⁠Jaap Vriesendorp⁠, Managing Partner at ⁠Marktlink Capital⁠, about building a leading private markets platform backed primarily by entrepreneurs and high-net-worth families.

Jaap explains why Marktlink sees scale as a competitive advantage in private markets, enabling better fund access, flexible ticket sizing and stronger operational infrastructure. The conversation also explores the firm’s merger strategy, annual fund structures, vintage diversification and ambitions to expand across Europe.

The episode comes shortly after Inflexion ⁠announced⁠ a minority investment into Marktlink Capital through Partnership Capital III, backing the firm’s next phase of European growth.

Key highlights

• Scaling to nearly €3.5 billion AUM backed mostly by entrepreneurs
• Why scale matters for fund access and LP consistency
• Combining venture and private equity capabilities
• Annual fund structures and vintage diversification
• Building infrastructure for long-term European expansion

Timestamps

• (02:00) Introduction and Jaap Vriesendorp's background
• (05:00) From McKinsey to launching a venture fund-of-funds
• (07:00) The merger that created Marktlink Capital
• (10:00) Building a platform backed by Dutch entrepreneurs
• (14:00) Why scale matters in private markets
• (17:00) Product strategy across venture, private equity, co-investments and private credit
• (23:00) Building Marktlink Capital and hiring exceptional talent
• (27:00) How Marktlink uses data science and AI internally
• (34:00) Marktlink's venture investment strategy
• (35:00) Vintage diversification, primaries and secondaries
• (39:00) Why annual funds help secure long-term LP capital
• (42:00) What Marktlink looks for in emerging venture managers
• (45:00) Why Europe deserves more credit as a venture ecosystem

Further listening:

⁠E347: The $26B CIO Who Turned Superforecasting Into Alpha - How I Invest with David Weisburd⁠

Learn more about the Love Tomorrow Summit and the programmes EUVC is curating, and secure your tickets here.

Most companies have access to AI tools. Far fewer have figured out how to drive adoption across an entire organisation.

In this episode, Andreas Munk Holm and Jeppe Høier are joined by Nils Wagner, CEO of REHAU New Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of the REHAU Group, and a third-generation member of the Wagner family behind REHAU.

Nils shares how REHAU built a secure AI platform, launched an AI Academy and AI Factory, reached 10% adoption within months and is targeting 50% by year-end. He also explains why the company moved from venture building to venture clienting and what other corporates can learn from the experience.

Key topics

• Scaling AI adoption across a large industrial organisation
• Building a secure platform with access to multiple LLMs and company data
• The AI Academy and AI Factory model
• Real-world AI use cases, including a touchless invoice workflow with 94% automation rates
• Why most corporates struggle with AI implementation
• Lessons from REHAU's shift from venture building to venture clienting

Timestamps

• (00:00) Why corporates struggle with AI adoption
• (02:00) Introducing Nils Wagner and REHAU New Ventures
• (06:00) Why REHAU started with venture building
• (15:00) The move to venture clienting
• (18:00) What makes venture clienting work
• (25:00) Why REHAU prioritised AI
• (27:00) Building REHAU's AI platform
• (28:00) The AI Academy approach
• (30:00) The AI Factory and workflow automation
• (31:00) AI use cases across REHAU
• (31:30) The touchless invoice project
• (33:00) Lessons for corporates implementing AI
• (34:00) The future of enterprise AI

Subscribe to EUVC, the home of European tech, for more insights.

Europe wants AI sovereignty. But can it reduce its dependence on foreign technology without sacrificing innovation, capability and competitiveness?

In this episode of This Week in European Tech, Dan Bowyer and Mads Jensen of SuperSeed are joined by Matt Russell, Managing Director (Head of Secondaries) at VenCap International, to discuss Europe's growing sovereignty push, the debate around Palantir, the future of venture secondaries, enterprise AI adoption and the latest developments from Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI.

The conversation explores why venture secondaries may be entering a new phase of growth, why some of the best-performing secondary investments are bought at premiums rather than discounts and what Europe's path to sovereign AI infrastructure could look like.

Topics covered:

• Europe's AI and cloud sovereignty challenge
• The Palantir debate and the risks of vendor lock-in
• Why venture secondaries could become a much larger market
• The biggest misconceptions about secondary investing
• Enterprise AI adoption and the challenge of measuring ROI
• Anthropic, SpaceX and the next generation of AI mega-companies
• OpenAI and the future of AI regulation
• Whether Europe can build sovereign AI infrastructure
• Why AI may ultimately be a productivity and margin story

Timestamps

• (00:00) Introduction and the rise of venture secondaries
• (01:00) Why liquidity is becoming venture capital’s biggest theme
• (05:00) Europe’s sovereignty push and the Cloud & AI Development Act
• (12:00) Sovereign cloud, AI infrastructure and the search for European champions
• (18:00) The Palantir debate: dependency, lock-in and strategic control
• (24:00) Enterprise AI adoption, experimentation and proving ROI
• (31:00) Anthropic, SpaceX and the next wave of mega-cap technology companies
• (38:00) AI regulation, liability and the OpenAI lawsuit
• (42:00) Predictions: Europe’s two-tier AI future
• (47:00) Deal of the week: defence tech, Gigaton and autonomous systems
• (50:00) What’s next: Apple, the ECB and the SpaceX IPO
• (55:00) Closing remarks

Subscribe to EUVC, the home of European tech, for more insights: https://www.eu.vc/subscribe

Tomorrowland is one of Europe's best-known festivals.

Less known is that it quietly helped create one of Europe's most interesting corporate-startup matchmaking platforms.

In this episode, Andreas Munk Holm speaks with Joris Beckers, Co-Founder of Love Tomorrow, and Mats Raes, Event Director of Love Tomorrow and The Impact Circle, about how a sustainability initiative evolved into an open innovation platform connecting startups, corporates, investors and public institutions.

The conversation starts with a simple idea: Tomorrowland is not just a festival. It is a temporary city of more than 75,000 people per day, facing many of the same challenges as any major city, from energy and water to waste, mobility and logistics.

That insight led to Love Tomorrow, Tomorrowland's official sustainability and innovation platform. As startups, corporates and public institutions increasingly began using the festival as a real-world testing ground for innovation, one challenge remained: connecting promising technologies with customers, deployment partners and smart capital.

The result was The Impact Circle, Europe's exclusive innovation network for impactful entrepreneurship. Through challenge-led collaboration, curated startup selection and partnerships including the European Innovation Council's Corporate Partnership Programme, The Impact Circle brings together startups, corporates, investors and public institutions around shared innovation challenges.

Joris and Mats explain how Tomorrowland became a stress test for innovation, why corporates increasingly engage as deployment partners rather than sponsors, and how The Impact Circle helps move innovation from pilot projects to real-world adoption.

Key highlights

• Why Tomorrowland describes itself as a "hyper-compressed city"
• How Love Tomorrow evolved from a sustainability initiative into an open innovation platform
• Why startups need real-world testing environments
• How innovation is stress-tested in real-world conditions
• Why corporates increasingly act as deployment partners
• The role of venture clienting in startup growth
• Why "smart capital" led to the creation of The Impact Circle
• The Impact Circle's partnership with the European Innovation Council
• How curated ecosystems improve innovation adoption
• What investors, founders and corporates can expect from Love Tomorrow Summit and The Impact Circle

Timestamps

• (00:00) Introduction(01:00) From Tomorrowland to Love Tomorrow
• (06:40) The "hyper-compressed city" thesis(11:00) Why startups need real-world testing environments
• (13:20) Why The Impact Circle was created
• (16:40) How The Impact Circle works
• (20:30) Venture clienting, corporates and startup deployment(23:20) Love Tomorrow Summit vs The Impact Circle
• (24:00) What makes Tomorrowland different from traditional conferences
• (26:20) Who should attend and why
• (28:30) Final thoughts

More information

Love Tomorrow Summit takes place on 23 July 2026 at Tomorrowland's iconic grounds in Boom, Belgium. The Summit unites the brightest minds — thinkers, entrepreneurs, music artists and leaders — to explore the future of intelligence, and what it asks of humans, organisations and society.

With 80+ speakers and artists, the programme combines keynotes, networking, music, entertainment and a magical evening show.

On July 23, EUVC is curating the investment stage at Love Tomorrow Summit, including 90 minutes of investor-focused keynotes on the Rose Garden Stage. On July 24, EUVC will host a dedicated investor programme at The Impact Circle Investor Lounge.

Get your tickets here.

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What if the strongest moats in the AI era aren't algorithms, but the data those algorithms depend on?

In the second episode of the Consumer Tech Napkin series, Andreas Munk Holm speakes with Renato Circi and Rafaël Michali, Co-Founders at Sava, and Joe Seager-Dupuy, Director, Investment at True, to discuss how founders should think about defensibility when technology is becoming easier to build.

SAVA is developing advanced biosensing technology designed to access bodily information in a painless, real-time and affordable way.

Their core belief is that while AI may accelerate software development, the hardest problems and the most valuable companies will be built around scarce data, difficult infrastructure and bottlenecks that cannot easily be replicated.

Together, they explore what separates static moats from dynamic ones, why patents and regulatory approvals are often just the starting point and how the best companies create advantages that strengthen as they scale.

Topics covered

• Why the best moats are often non-consensus
• Static versus dynamic moats
• Why patents and regulation are not enough
• Identifying bottlenecks that create lasting value
• AI, proprietary data and defensibility
• Building platforms instead of products
• Why user experience can be a moat
• Europe's advantage in deep tech

Timestamps

• (00:00) Why moats matter in consumer technology
• (02:00) Introducing Sava and the future of health monitoring
• (06:00) What a moat actually is
• (09:00) The Apple Watch question and non-invasive sensing
• (12:00) Consumer experience versus incumbent medical devices
• (15:00) How great companies sequence moats
• (18:00) From patents to platforms
• (22:00) Bundling, ecosystems and long-term defensibility
• (24:00) Static versus dynamic moats
• (27:00) Why patents only buy time
• (29:00) Owning bottlenecks in health data
• (31:00) Why AI increases the value of proprietary data
• (36:00) Europe's deep tech advantage
• (40:00) The biggest misconceptions about moats
• (43:00) Why the best moats are often non-consensus

Consumer Tech Napkin is brought to you in partnership with True.

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Everyone says AI is taking jobs. The data says something more complicated.

In this episode of This Week in European Tech, Dan Bowyer and Mads Jensen of SuperSeed unpack the growing panic around AI-driven job losses, why junior hiring is falling across many industries and whether AI is actually the culprit.

They explore new research suggesting remote work may be having a bigger impact on entry-level employment than AI, discuss the UK's record number of young people not in employment, education or training and examine what the data really shows about automation and labour markets.

They also cover Anthropic's latest model release, the rise of AI application-layer companies, Europe's sovereignty debate, the economics of AI infrastructure and a zero-employee AI company that just raised $30 million.

Topics covered

• Is AI really replacing workers?
• Why junior hiring is falling
• What the data says about AI and employment
• Anthropic's rise and Opus 4.8
• Why the AI application layer is winning
• Europe's tech sovereignty dilemma
• The zero-employee AI company phenomenon
• AI infrastructure beyond GPUs

Timestamps

• (00:00) The rise of the zero-employee AI company
• (04:50) Why AI applications are becoming more valuable
• (09:00) AI infrastructure moves beyond GPUs
• (16:00) Snowflake, Salesforce and enterprise AI adoption
• (24:00) Anthropic's latest model and valuation surge
• (27:00) Europe's sovereignty dilemma
• (33:00) The $30 million zero-employee AI startup
• (35:45) Is AI actually taking jobs?
• (38:00) What the data says about junior hiring
• (41:00) Why AI may not be the main cause
• (46:00) Predictions: which AI unicorn could fail next?
• (48:00) Deal of the week: Cognition and Devin

For more European venture, AI and startup insights, subscribe to EUVC, the home of European tech.

Most VCs think corporate venture capital is slower, more conflicted and structurally weaker than traditional venture firms.

Marc Thom, Corporate Vice President and Head of Henkel Ventures, argues the opposite and explains why the best CVCs may actually outperform traditional VCs over time.

In this episode, Marc joins Andreas Munk Holm and Jeppe Høier to discuss how Henkel built one of Europe’s leading corporate venture platforms, why most startup-corporate partnerships fail and how corporates can create both strategic and financial advantage through venture investing.

Topics covered

• Why the best CVCs can outperform VCs
• How Henkel structures venture investing and partnerships
• The “holy bible” behind startup collaboration inside corporates
• Why most startup partnerships fail internally
• The role corporates should play on startup cap tables
• How AI is reshaping industrial R&D and materials science

Timestamps

• (00:00) Why CVCs can outperform traditional VCs
• (04:00) How Henkel structures startup sourcing and partnerships
• (11:00) The use case framework behind Henkel Ventures
• (16:00) The “Role of Henkel” in startup investing
• (23:00) Why Henkel invested in ResearchGate
• (27:40) AI, chemistry and the future of industrial R&D
• (30:20) Why Marc believes CVCs can outperform VCs
• (36:00) How Henkel built internal alignment for venture investing

Subscribe to EUVC, the home of European tech, for more insights.

AI is no longer just a technology story. It is reshaping capital markets, infrastructure and industrial policy.

In the latest episode of This Week in European Tech, Mads Jensen and Dan Bowyer of SuperSeed break down NVIDIA’s dominance of the AI economy, the return of the IPO market through OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX, and Europe’s push to build sovereign technology capabilities.

Highlights

• NVIDIA and the economics of AI infrastructure
• OpenAI, Anthropic and the IPO market reopening
• Europe’s sovereign AI push
• AI backlash and political risk in the US
• Unitree and the rise of humanoid robotics
• Isomorphic Labs and AI-driven drug discovery

Timestamps

• (03:00) NVIDIA is swallowing the AI economy
• (06:20) The IPO market is reopening through OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX
• (08:40) Why SpaceX is really an AI infrastructure story
• (11:40) OpenAI’s IPO could expose the real economics of AI
• (13:40) Why Unitree and humanoid robotics matter for Europe
• (20:10) Europe’s sovereign AI push through Mistral, EQT and Quantexa
• (27:40) Americans are turning against AI
• (36:10) Isomorphic Labs and Europe’s biggest AI biotech opportunity

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