Sparkmind Capital

What does military leadership teach you about investing in frontier technology?

In this episode, Colin Brown and Ruy Pinto sit down with Andrew Turner, former senior Royal Air Force leader and now an investor and strategic adviser focused on emerging technology, national infrastructure and security. Andrew shares the journey from flying helicopters in some of the world's most demanding environments to working on the future of quantum, space, semiconductors and critical infrastructure.

We explore:- Why quantum is about far more than cryptography - including sensing, computing and precision timing- The hidden national-security risks created by our dependence on precision time and space infrastructure- Why Europe is strong at generating breakthrough technology but often struggles to provide the scale capital needed to turn it into industries- How private capital can help address national infrastructure challenges- What military principles like collaboration, winning and "selection and maintenance of the aim" can teach investors and business leaders- Why Europe needs to be bolder if it wants to build globally competitive technology companies- The changing relationship between governments, private capital and the defence industry- Why Andrew believes quantum could become a defining technology of the next decadeA fascinating conversation about leadership, technology, national resilience and Europe's opportunity to build the industries of tomorrow.#QuantumComputing #DeepTech #EuropeanTechnology #DefenceTech #SpaceTech #Investing #FrontierTechnology #Semiconductors

Mattipekka Kronqvist could never be described as boring!His superpower is to reach deep into University research labs and distil just the right technology to meet a capability he sees in the real world.This episode is unique not because of the companies we talk about, but because of the range of related problems that MPK is solving. Dive in. You will not be bored!

Hardware is hard.It requires capital, specialist talent, expensive equipment and the ability to bring mechanical, electrical and software engineers together to solve problems that cannot be built behind a laptop.That is exactly what Glazeworks is building in Tallinn.In this episode of the Protect Europe Podcast, Colin sits down with Kyle, founder of Glazeworks, a hardware venture studio taking on ambitious challenges across electric mobility, autonomous systems, drones and underwater technology.Glazeworks brings engineers, equipment and infrastructure together under one roof, allowing teams to prototype and test complex hardware faster and more capital efficiently.Inside the episode:* Why Glazeworks is building a venture studio for hardware rather than another traditional startup.* How shared engineering talent and expensive equipment can dramatically reduce the barriers to building complex physical products.* Why Tallinn and Ülemiste City provide a uniquely attractive environment for hardware innovation and testing.* Inside the Glazeworks Lab and “The Oven”, including fabrication facilities, laser cutting and welding, electronics, 3D printing and a dedicated test pool for surface and underwater vehicles.* Why Glazeworks is focused on electric mobility, autonomous vehicles, drones and unmanned underwater systems.* The ambition behind building a modular electric vehicle chassis that could make it easier and faster to create new vehicles.* Why the rapid evolution of autonomous systems is creating new opportunities across defense, infrastructure, agriculture and industry.* The enormous challenge of understanding what is happening beneath the surface of ports and oceans, and why lower-cost underwater technology could unlock entirely new capabilities.* Why ambitious projects that may never reach the market can still create valuable technologies, companies and entirely new industries along the way.* Why Europe needs to become more ambitious about building frontier technology and category-defining companies.Glazeworks is not looking for people who simply want to make a small improvement to something that already exists.The ambition is bigger: identify what should exist next, bring the right people together and build it.If you are a builder, engineer, maker or founder who wants to work on difficult problems and frontier technology, this conversation is for you.#ProtectEurope #Hardware #DeepTech #DefenceTech #Robotics #ElectricMobility #Drones #EuropeanInnovation #Tallinn

Ukraine has transformed modern warfare - and exposed how poorly traditional defence systems handle a battlefield filled with drones, sensors, software and rapidly changing technology.In this episode, Michał and Andrzej discuss Defence Bay's work building a new generation of battlefield management systems: interoperable, decentralised and designed to work even when communications fail.We talk about what Ukraine has taught Europe about defence technology, why startups can move faster than traditional procurement, and why European technical talent now has an opportunity to build globally significant defence companies.The bigger question: can Europe turn its talent, capital and industrial capability into the technology it needs to defend itself?#DefenseTech #Europe #NATO #Ukraine #Drones #EuropeanDefense

AI is getting remarkably good at generating answers.But can it actually understand the world those answers are being used in?That is a much harder problem.In this episode of the Protect Europe Podcast, Colin Brown speaks with Jussi Hinkkanen, founder of Fuzu, about the increasingly important layer between AI models and the real world: human judgment, multilingual data, cultural context, multimodal data, evaluation, governance and trust.The AI industry has spent enormous amounts of time and capital building increasingly capable models. But as those models move into enterprises, regulated industries, new markets and eventually the physical world, another set of problems becomes unavoidable.Does the model understand the language?Does it understand the culture?Has it been trained and evaluated against the reality of the people who will actually use it?Can its performance be tested against the customer's real use case rather than an abstract benchmark?Can companies demonstrate that the system is behaving as intended?And what happens when something goes wrong?Jussi argues that human judgment becomes more important, not less, as AI becomes more capable.Fuzu Atlas is building what Jussi describes as a governance-first workforce for AI, drawing on Fuzu's global talent ecosystem to provide the human expertise needed to make AI systems work in the real world.We also discuss why generic AI benchmarks are becoming less useful, why enterprise data is often nowhere near AI-ready, why governance needs to be built into the process rather than bolted on afterwards, and why ethical labour and cost efficiency do not have to be opposites.Ultimately, this is a conversation about what happens when the AI honeymoon ends.The technology is powerful.Now it has to work.For real customers.In real languages.In real markets.With real consequences.And with safeguards that make the technology a genuine improvement rather than simply a cheaper version of what came before.Learn more about Fuzu Atlas:https://www.fuzu.com/atlas https://www.linkedin.com/company/fuzu-atlas/about/Connect with Jussi:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jussi-hinkkanen/#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Data #AIData #MultilingualAI #AIGovernance #FuzuAtlas #Europe #Africa #ProtectEurope

Norway found oil twice.First, beneath the North Sea.Then, in the global markets.Today, Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global - better known as the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund or Oil Fund - is one of the most extraordinary financial institutions ever created. But the usual story is wrong.It is often told as a simple tale: Norway discovered oil, wise politicians resisted the temptation to spend it, created a sovereign wealth fund, invested the money, and became rich.The real story is much more interesting.Norway did not begin with a perfect plan. It spent the early petroleum revenues, overheated its economy, experienced Dutch disease, and learned the hard way that selling a finite national asset is not the same thing as earning sustainable income.The crucial decisions came earlier - and elsewhere.Before Norway had found commercial quantities of oil, it first had to establish who owned the resources beneath the North Sea. Jens Evensen and the Norwegian state helped secure the legal foundation for Norwegian sovereignty over a huge offshore area.Then came Farouk Al-Kasim, an Iraqi petroleum geologist who arrived in Norway almost by accident and recognised something the Norwegian state could not yet see: owning a resource means very little if you don't have the capability to understand it.His answer was not to throw out the international oil companies. It was to become a knowledgeable customer.Norway built institutions, technical competence, regulation and a domestic petroleum industry capable of negotiating with companies that had decades of experience. Government would set policy. An independent regulator would oversee the resource. Statoil would participate commercially. International companies would still bring capital, technology and competition.That architecture mattered.So did the painful lessons that followed.Norway eventually separated petroleum income from petroleum spending, learned to invest the wealth outside its own small economy, and built the political discipline required to keep the money from simply becoming another source of government spending.The result was not a perfect system created in one brilliant act of foresight.It was a system built through decades of observing, failing, assessing and changing.And that may be the real lesson of Norway.The fund converted a finite geological inheritance into a portfolio of financial assets that future generations can inherit. But money is not the same as capability. Financial returns are not the same as economic resilience. And a sovereign wealth fund is not, by itself, the institution.The institution is the repeated democratic decision not to consume the wealth.Norway has largely answered one enormous question:What will we own after the oil?It now faces another:What will we do after the oil?In this episode of Category Leaders, Colin Brown and Martti Wallin trace the Norwegian story from the first oil negotiations in the 1960s through the creation and evolution of the Oil Fund - and ask what other countries, companies and investors can actually learn from it.This is a story about sovereignty, extraction, capability, institutions, political discipline and the conversion of finite wealth into something that can endure.

Space is no longer just the next frontier. It is becoming critical infrastructure.In this episode of the Protect Europe Podcast, we sit down with Mark Boggett and Ruy Pinto to discuss the transformation of the space economy and what it means for Europe, investors, and the companies building the next generation of space infrastructure.The key question runs through the conversation:Should investors chase the most exciting technology - or focus on who will actually buy it?#SpaceEconomy #SpaceTech #Europe #SpaceX #VentureCapital #DefenseTech #DeepTech

Martin Valovsky shares insights into the hard-edged approach of the Baryon Investment Fund, emphasising the importance of founder qualities, technological focus, and building Europe's defence industry. Discover how their team’s diverse backgrounds and shared values drive their investment strategy and support for innovative defence technologies.

Petra Soderling shares insights on the current state of quantum technology, Europe's position, and future investment opportunities.

Discover how quantum is shaping the future of tech and why Europe is a key player.

Petra drafted the EU quantum strategy and coordinated quantum finance labs at the European Investment Bank. Petra works at the intersection of government and deeptech.