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.