E688 | This Week in European Tech with Dan, Mads & Lomax

2 Feb 2026 · 1 h 5 min · 29 chapters

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In short

Podcast Episode Summary: E688 | This Week in European Tech with Dan, Mads & Lomax

Podcast Overview Podcast Title: EUVC Description: EUVC is your go-to podcast for everything European VC. Co-hosted by Andreas Munk Holm and David Cruz e Silva, EUVC features some of the most prominent people from the European VC industry, offering fresh perspectives on the sector.

Episode Details Episode Title: E688 | This Week in European Tech with Dan, Mads & Lomax Episode Description: In this episode, the hosts discuss the latest developments in European tech, venture capital, and geopolitical dynamics. The conversation touches on various topics including Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030, AI advancements, and Europe’s approach to defense spending.

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Key Themes and Discussions

Opening Remarks

  • Light-hearted banter about current deals and the importance of fourth-time founders in venture capital.
  • Reflections on a recent trip to Saudi Arabia, emphasizing the contrast between media perceptions and the reality encountered in Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030

  • Vision 2030 is presented as a strategic framework aimed at transforming Saudi Arabia's economy from oil dependency to a diversified investment-driven landscape.
  • Discussion on whether Europe has a comparable guiding vision. Suggestions include "Make Europe Great Again" as a hypothetical branding.

AI Developments

  • Introduction of MaltBot (formerly ClaudeBot), a personal AI agent that can negotiate and perform tasks autonomously.
  • Notable example: A user negotiated a car deal through MaltBot.
  • Discussion about the implications of autonomous AI tools and the potential risks of granting them extensive access to personal data.

European Defense Spending

  • Analysis of the increasing importance of defense spending in Europe amid geopolitical tensions.
  • Discussion on whether Europe can effectively manage its defense without the US and the implications of aging populations on military capability.

European Integration and the "United States of Europe"

  • Skepticism about the feasibility of a true United States of Europe, given the varying political landscapes and cultural differences across member states.
  • Discussion about whether crises are necessary to galvanize European unity and strategic action.

Technology and Market Trends

  • Overview of big tech earnings, focusing on companies like Meta, Microsoft, and Tesla.
  • Meta's revenue growth contrasted with Microsoft’s declining Azure growth despite increased CapEx.
  • Tesla's pivot to positioning itself as a "physical AI company" rather than just an automaker.

Social Media Regulations

  • Examination of proposed bans on social media for minors in various countries, including Australia and France.
  • Discussion of the broader implications of social media on mental health, particularly among young women.

Deal of the Week

  • Sword Health acquires Kaya for $285 million, expanding its presence in the digital health market.
  • Highlights the success of consolidation within the digital health sector, with Sword Health now valued at $4 billion.

Conclusion

  • The episode emphasizes the need for Europe to adopt a more unified approach to its challenges, be it in defense, economic strategy, or technological advancement.
  • A call for optimism and proactive measures in addressing the evolving landscape of European tech and venture capital.

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Key Takeaways

  • Vision and Strategy: Europe lacks a cohesive strategic vision akin to Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030.
  • AI Evolution: The rise of autonomous AI agents presents both opportunities and risks.
  • Defense Dynamics: Europe’s defense spending is becoming increasingly significant, yet there are challenges in achieving self-reliance.
  • Cultural and Political Challenges: Attempts at deeper European integration face cultural and historical hurdles.
  • Social Media Responsibility: Regulatory measures are being evaluated to protect younger audiences from the adverse effects of social media.

This episode provides a rich tapestry of discussions that delve into the current state of European tech, its growth prospects, and the broader societal implications of these developments.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

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Discussion on Recent Events in Saudi Arabia

0:46 to 2:30

Exploring the hosts' impressions and experiences in Saudi Arabia.

“now to start with i want to just share that i was in saudi arabia for the first time this week Has anyone been to Saudi?”

Vision 2030 and Europe's Guiding Light

2:31 to 5:10

Debate on Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 and its implications for Europe.

“how they describe it is they're turning Saudi Arabia into a diversified investment driven economy that can employ its own citizens.”

The Dynamics of Governance and Startups

5:11 to 7:48

Discussion on how governance structures may lag behind dynamic growth.

“Well, just a left field one there on the vision and mission for a country and the guiding light.”

AI Corner: Introducing MaltBot

7:49 to 10:40

Introduction to MaltBot and its features as a personal AI agent.

“A bit of a, I think a bit of a kind of an example, game-changing agent, personal agent.”

The Potential and Risks of AI Agents

10:41 to 13:00

Exploring the capabilities and risks associated with AI agents like MaltBot.

“I think it's still a little scary because today we have agents and we use agents, right?”

Recent AI Investments and Market Trends

13:01 to 14:01

Overview of recent investments in AI companies and market shifts.

“So we got some more AI raises this week.”

OpenAI and SoftBank's Bold Moves

14:01 to 16:58

Explore the major financial maneuvers involving OpenAI and SoftBank's investments.

“which is another nice little circular deal.”

Anthropic's Rapid Growth and Competition

16:59 to 19:32

Discuss Anthropic's funding success and its competitive edge against OpenAI.

“It's what we've been waiting for and been talking about for a long time.”

Innovations in AI: Moonshot's New Model

19:33 to 21:01

Learn about Moonshot's K2.5 model and its groundbreaking swarm orchestration capabilities.

“Could I call this like another efficiency play?”

Tech Earnings Season Insights

21:02 to 23:06

Examine the latest tech earnings and what they reveal about market trends.

“American public markets with AI and techs.”
Show all 29 chapters

Comparing Meta and Microsoft's Strategies

23:07 to 28:00

Analyze the contrasting approaches of Meta and Microsoft in AI and CapEx spending.

“I don't know why, but I mean, well, they'll keep the shareholders happy, I guess.”

Meta's Financial Challenges and Business Model

28:00 to 29:10

Exploration of Meta's revenue sources and the impact of new premium services.

“But their tech platform is much, much cheaper.”

Klarna's Credit Loss Concerns

29:10 to 30:40

Discussion on Klarna's significant drop and the implications of credit loss provisions.

“The other interesting news with Meta, of course, is that they're rolling out this premium service in the UK because of the constraints on data protection.”

EU Integration: Progress and Challenges

30:40 to 35:15

Assessment of the EU's path towards integration and the obstacles faced.

“And I thought it was just such a wonderful statesperson.”

The Future of Europe: Opportunities and Challenges

35:15 to 37:20

Insights into how Europe can leverage its strengths and address historical challenges.

“I mean, everyone sits here and around the table, including us, and just has this attitude because if ever there was a moment, you know, I mean, the UK is not out of Europe, right?”

The Case for Deeper Integration in Europe

37:20 to 41:40

Debate on the necessity for deeper economic ties and potential paths forward.

“I mean, it's unknown in the history of the world for countries to work together and to create this union that has been created.”

Historical Context of European Integration

41:40 to 42:00

Exploration of the historical foundations and debates around European integration.

“We probably haven't seen something that's at quite the level yet.”

Historical Perspectives on European Unity

42:00 to 43:19

Exploration of Churchill's views and early European integration efforts.

“who ever were harping on about the United States of Europe.”

Trade Deals and Economic Realities

43:20 to 44:39

Discussion on recent EU trade deals with India and Mercosur and their implications.

“Dan, I mean, a couple of the other news pieces was we had the EU doing the Mercosur trade deal recently, and then the India trade deal this week.”

UK's Relationship with China and Financial Services

44:40 to 46:18

Analysis of Starmer's visit to China and its potential impact on financial ties.

“It's been really, really hard for other countries to negotiate with China and get something meaningful out of it.”

European Defense Spending Landscape

46:19 to 47:57

Insights into Europe's defense spending and the challenges faced in military capabilities.

“just because we're still so far behind the US on independent capability.”

Risks and Future of Defense Budgets

47:58 to 49:59

Examination of potential cuts to defense budgets amidst political changes and challenges.

“This is a country that has shown their potential true colours.”

Re-Industrialization of Defense in Europe

50:00 to 51:19

Discussion on the need for Europe to enhance its defense industry and capabilities.

“So I just have, I don't have a huge amount of faith that we're going to be consistent on this stuff.”

Modern Warfare and Defense Strategies

51:20 to 54:24

Consideration of how modern warfare influences European defense strategies and spending.

“So the US is spending about 900 billion a year on their defense and Europe spends about half right now.”

Social Media's Impact on Youth

54:25 to 56:07

Exploration of social media's effects on young people's mental health and development.

“of the social media bans obviously Oz, France, potentially UK banning social media for youngsters.”

The Impact of Social Media on Youth

56:07 to 57:55

Discussing the legal implications of social media use among young people.

“However, we'll see how the court cases pan out.”

Legal and Regulatory Approaches to Social Media

57:55 to 1:01:34

Exploring different approaches taken in Europe and the US towards social media regulation.

“Virtue signaling through sort of laws that are unenforceable and don't work.”

AI Skills Training Initiatives

1:01:34 to 1:03:04

Discussion on the UK's initiative to train millions in AI skills.

“I also saw this week very, very quickly that the UK government has pledged to train 10 million UK residents how to use AI.”

Deal of the Week: Sword Health's Acquisition

1:03:04 to 1:04:25

Reviewing the significant acquisition of Kaya by Sword Health.

“I'm going to keep an eye on and see what the uptake is.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00Hello and welcome to Upside, the podcast that looks behind the headlines that affect European venture. Today, Mads, Lomax, Andrew, myself, it is a full house. And what have we got on the docket? We are talking about Claudebot, Maltbot, what, what? We've got big tech earnings. They're out. We've got some private AI mega raises. I want to dig into some of those. We are looking at the United States of Europe. Could we, should we? That's one for you, Mads. And we're tooling up for a fight. This is your one, Andrew. We are looking at defense spend across Europe. we've got deals of the week and some other bits and pieces to throw in

0:50now to start with i want to just share that i was in saudi arabia for the first time this week Has anyone been to Saudi? Yep. I'd not been before. And it's really hard to not take with you all of the Western media stereotypes that you hear and all of the all of the Middle East region noise that we see across the news cycle. And I was absolutely blown away at how friendly and fun the people were. I really enjoyed Riyadh. It's a really interesting city. It's like a Dubai-ish kind of vibe. All building sites. So much going on. And then I was hearing, I was at the Super Return LPGP conference, speaking with loads of different characters and hearing all of the inside stuff that you don't hear about in the news.

1:41And Neom is changing a lot. So Neon, which is this big kind of project around, we've all heard of the line. Did you go and see anything, Mads, while you were there? Did you see any of the projects? I didn't get tans. So we've got the line, we've got the oxygen, we've got Trojana and Sindela, I think it's called, which is the luxury island. Most people have heard of the line, which was that crazy long built silver literal line in the desert. That's been super scaled back. So they're really pulling back on all of these mega projects. So yet to see how they're going to come to pass. And the other thing that I just wanted to raise was Vision 2030, which I wanted to talk about with you guys.

2:20I love the fact they've got this kind of strategic guiding light. Now, Vision 2030 is MBS's way of kind of corralling all of the energy in the population and across the investors and all of the startups and everything to focus on. how they describe it is they're turning Saudi Arabia into a diversified investment driven economy that can employ its own citizens. And I just, I think it's really lovely to have a kind of a guiding light context. And I was wondering what we should have for Europe. Any ideas as to what we should have as the guiding light for us? Make Europe great again. Mega, mega, mega.

3:02Muck, make UK great again. But it just felt like, because they all have this kind of guiding reasons to do business, invest, build, start up, do their stuff. I think we need something. I don't know what it is. That's an example of a centrally run regime, no? I mean, it's very different. But we can still have, I mean, I'm not sure. It'll get ripped off every couple of years. The problem in Europe is that, I mean, even in the individual countries, we don't really have strategic guiding lights, do we? I mean, look at the UK's meandering at the moment, let alone Europe. We've got the eight industrial strategies, right?

3:35not that we should use those there's no coherent mission for the country though is there? No there isn't I mean I remember the 2012 Olympics was quite a galvanising force, obviously wars, did you see who is the political who's the guy that runs what's the third political party called? Ed Davey runs the Lib Democrat Lib Dems, I forgot what they were called Jill I saw that he made a call for war bonds this week Did you see that? Yes So I kind of get the principle that, you know, this is like, you know That's a rebrand for your fundraise, isn't it? A war bond A war bond I also saw that Neon, by the way, back on Saudi They were hosting the Asian Winter Games in Saudi Arabia in 2029 Yeah, which is crazy Like, you know, the skiing, the biathlon, all that stuff But it's just been postponed Has it?

4:31they're doing the world cup in 2034 i think yeah but not the freaking winter games yes yes they are but they're doing they've got they've opened up obviously they're the comedy festival they've they've opened up the whole uh music scene i i who knows what to not believe believe believe whatever but it was just a really energizing trip and a very um surprising trip i didn't i didn't expect to i don't know i don't know what i expected i was i was really i really enjoyed it and i can't wait to go back to be how much money did you close well yeah to be to be seen they what most regions want and saudi is no different they want circular capital they want foreign investors to come in and help build their ecosystem which i totally understand it was the same in dubai when we spent time there but they are also looking to there are lots of saudi families looking to invest in europe So there were some lovely conversations to be had, should I say, Lomax.

5:28Right. Anyway, enough of my stuff. Well, just a left field one there on the vision and mission for a country and the guiding light. So, you know, we know what happens with startups when they grow up and eventually the founders leave and professional management takes over and they're sort of their IPO'd and they're run by boards and it all becomes a little bit stale. And I wonder, you know, is there an analogy with democracies? sort of, you know, when you have these elected, you know, elected governments, governance structures, they're good at steady as she goes and sort of just, you know, continuing the status quo.

6:05But actually, if you look at the really dynamic, you know, places, the United States was very dynamic, right? It was founding fathers and it was sort of kind of all, you know, going crazy. And, but then after a while, once the founders, they leave, is that when things get tired and it's just more steady as she goes. And actually, our model just isn't that well suited for setting out a vision and going after it because four year election cycles and all that stuff. I just think we're really bad when we're not at war. So I think we just we need something that galvanizes the human spirit. And when everything is really nice and obviously in Western countries, quite peaceful up until recently, it just feels like we kind of just fall off.

6:48the it all just gets a bit like bau and we i i hate the thought of it but it feels like it's only when we're under under pressure and and the the conflict that actually things kind of come together but maybe maybe we'll see i mean you look at look at the you know the peace dividends you look at the the economic growth that both you know the western world has seen since the end of the cold war then you know i i think that kind of goes against what you're saying there you know fair and obviously america's with the american dream and their capitalism and their rah rah and their sales and their push they've done okay but at what cost i mean society doesn't really function over there it feel like that you know this this shock treatment that europe is getting is definitely being good for it which we're going to come on to later today i guess but yeah we are well let's get into it but we are we are going to talk a lot about um europe's renewal but let's let's start with a bit of ai corner stuff has anybody here played with claude bot now rebranded as malt bot does anyone play with it yep of course mad i i haven't mainly mainly through fear i didn't have a separate machine so mainly through fear about in time not setting up a virtual machine but just to set up so claude bot now malt bot a device built by peter steinberger which I'd probably categorize as a personal intern.

8:09It's an agent, an agent on steroids. Very, very smart. A bit of a, I think a bit of a kind of an example, game-changing agent, personal agent. And I think this is what Siri should have been. Now, incidentally, I think we're going to see the new Siri in February. I know I'm a big Apple fan boy and I keep bringing it up, but I think this is what Siri should be, could be. But Mads, tee up a bit better than I just did. what MaltBot is. So Peter Steinberger, he's an Austrian dev who built kind of some software and he sold it. And then he said, look, I felt empty after caching out. And I don't like to sit around and just read.

8:50I like to build stuff. So he's built this MaltBot here as a hobby. And it's an open source AI agent with full control of your system. So it can control the mouse, the keyboard, your data, and also connects to all kinds of services like your messaging and your WhatsApp. And then you can set it loose and you can ask it to do stuff. You can ask it to check in on things. You can ask it to go and find stuff for you. You can ask it to send messages. I can do all kinds of stuff. I saw a guy, did you see this, Mads? I saw a guy who negotiated a new car deal or the bot, the agent negotiated the new car deal.

9:27Did you read about that? There are all kinds of good stories coming out i must say it scares me a little bit giving it that much agency and so no i have not asked it to make any investments on our behalf just yet i saw the guy also did the um there was a guy who when it was claude bot they changed name because anthropic gave a cease and desist so they changed it from claude bot which was it's a lobster logo so it's claw c-l-a-w it's a play on the word and and the and the logo it wasn't it's not clawed as in anthropics clawed so they changed it to mold bot and there was a guy who uploaded all of his health data and access to tesco his um shopping basket and it built and bought so it built a recipe for for his body for his health went to tesco filled the basket bought the stuff and the stuff all got delivered automatically so there are all these like little lovely stories of the guy negotiating for a new car he got four and a half thousand dollars off his so it negotiated with all of these dealers in his local region automatically and got him a four and a half grand discount ultimately.

10:31The Tesco one, there was another one. I can't remember what it was. Anyway, it's just, it's a very interesting moment in time, Matt. You know, a hundred percent. And it's sort of, it heralds what's ahead for us. I think it's still a little scary because today we have agents and we use agents, right? And we use agents a lot and, you know, we use Cloud Code and we set it up and we do stuff, but there's still a relative level of control in terms of what you do. And there's a defined scope, whereas this is sort of more of an unconstrained scope. It is think about how to do stuff and then go out and figure out how to do it.

11:02You have access to my email, my WhatsApp, you can send messages to people. You can do all kinds of stuff that really, as you can imagine, could end up quite badly if you're not careful. You can power it by multiple different models. I mean, clearly Peter Steinberger, the developer, he is a very sharp dev because the way he set it up is just really, really elegant, right? So you don't have to connect it to Anthropic. You can connect it to other LLMs if you want. I mean, it's just there's so much flexibility built into the system, which is what makes it really easy to connect to all kinds of services around you that you might be using for stuff.

11:36What people have rushed to do is to rush out and buy their own sort of separate systems to install ClotBud just so that ClotBud doesn't take it upon itself to completely reorganize your important data to the point And he's commercializing this, Mads? I don't know if he's commercializing it. I think he's just opened it up. I mean, I wouldn't connect my bank account to it, but I would give it limited access to things or load up, I don't know, some kind of payment card, limited payment card to things and give it a proper go. But I don't think, Mads, it's going to get beyond the geeks. I think this is just for geeks.

12:12And I think this is just going to show what's possible. I think you're right. I think it's too dangerous today. and with that i don't mean that the tech is tech right but it's so powerful it literally it literally thinks for itself it it will query things you know it's got what was it called what's the token called where it can wake up every 10 minutes and do stuff on its own the the moonlight process or something where it can just go off it just wakes up and goes oh i can see in your inbox you know such and such an email has come in i'm going to go off and action that and it can just do all these things on its own so where did you set it up mads on your not on your actual computer no well you can you can download it to your machine or if you were a little more careful you can buy another machine and download it there but it just needs it just needs a kind of a your mac and and off you go it can go on a raspberry pi it can go on anything i mean loads of people are buying mac minis and just loading them up like a little independent device and then off it goes but you can run a virtual machine you put on a raspberry pi put on anything i'm gonna have a play i'm gonna to be i'm gonna be bold this week and have a play more on ai so so so found us if you if if you get uh kind of unsolicited term sheets from an analyst called uh called uh clodbot uh just you know be careful right it may not be it may not be i do worry i do worry like imagine getting a spam email or something a junk email and then it wakes up and actions something and and i also saw that somebody had their Amazon account hacked.

13:37So there was some kind of access. There was some kind of open something where somebody's Amazon, he was trying to, I think it was, you know, building some of his kids' bedrooms and somebody got access to his Amazon account and started buying stuff that wasn't part of the, part of the molt bot. So we got some more AI raises this week. We had SoftBank investing into OpenAI. We have Anthropic raising. I saw that Tesla invested into XAI, which is another nice little circular deal. Well done, Elon. That was against, I remember this happening last year, it was against shareholder wishes. We've also got some tech earnings reports.

14:12We will come on to those in a second. But I tell you what, Lomax, just to tee off, SoftBank, OpenAI, what's happening there? So OpenAI has obviously already raised like famous amounts of money. I think they've raised 64 billion already. Now looking to raise 160, I think is the number. Sorry, looking to raise 100 now, 100 billion in a new round. And SoftBank have already gone big on OpenAI. Masa Yoshison, a.k.a. Masa, at SoftBank is known for his big swings. And, you know, this is no exception. Does he have the money? He's got the money because I remember there was a challenge. Historically, his massive, massive bet was 20 million into Alibaba, which became 130 billion.

14:59He's had a couple of whiffs with WeWork. And then he infamously sold NVIDIA way earlier than he should have done, which I think as of today's date would have been worth$150 billion on a relatively small position. But SoftBank still are now doubling, you know, tribbling down onto OpenAI. They own 11 % of the company now and are looking to invest, what is it now, another 20 billion? How much, sorry? I think it's another 20 bill. Another 20 bill on top of the 41 billion they've already put into the company. So it's Massa again going big. Interesting. And it's very counter to the current zeitgeist, right?

15:44Everyone's looking elsewhere rather than OpenAI. Well, people are looking at Anthropoc. I mean, yeah. I mean, if you look at OpenAI now, I mean, they're doing, as reported, what, 20 billion ARR? So the growth rate actually from the last 12 months is only 2.5x growth rate. I know these numbers are very, very big. Yeah, I was going to say. I know these numbers are very, very big. All right. What's happening at Anthropic, Matt? So they were in talks to do a$10 billion funding round. That's now been doubled to$20 billion due to oversubscription. Everybody wants into this. Hottest of hot AI companies.

16:18And it's a steal, a bargain. Just half the valuation of OpenAI,$350 headline. Revenue doubled to$10 billion, but doubled in the last six months. So growth rates are certainly higher than OpenAI's right now. A key difference to OpenAI is that the Anthropic team expects to break even by 2028. So before OpenAI, whereas Sam Altman over at the OpenAI team, he's basically said, we're going to keep investing and doubling down again and again and again. They're going to burn, what,$14 billion this year, OpenAI, I think, is the projection. And Anthropica, on the other hand, could be headed towards an IPO.

16:53Oh, right. That's the rumor. So it's exciting. I mean, it's great to see the competition. The big news over at OpenAI is that the ads are coming. It's what we've been waiting for and been talking about for a long time. And it is a game changer. But won't they just move? I mean, I now use Claude more than I use ChatGPT because it's such a commodity. You just move, right? If it's an uncomfortable experience, why would you stay? Ads don't necessarily have to be in a comfortable experience. I mean, I think that's the experience we have from Google, right? There's been lots of ads and people have been using it.

17:26Also getting to the point where there's a sunk cost in buying into a platform, right? As you start to integrate things into your workflows, be it Claw, be it OpenAI, as it learns what you like, what you don't like, as you learn its quirks, there begins to be a sunk cost in switching systems. I don't know with this though, Andrew. I think there is, it's such a commodity and it learns and picks up so quickly. I'm not sure. Anyway, I'm talking as a consumer. And they all still make mistakes. So they're all about it. There we go. There's my boy. There he is. Mads, what else is happening on the ASA?

17:59What's happening with Agent Swarms? What's all this about? So while our friends in the States have been busy slinging around the billions, there's some really cool AI news that have come out of China. So Moonshot, the Chinese AI lab that blew away benchmarks with their Kimi K2 model last summer, They've released an upgrade, and it's the 2.5, K2.5, the swarm model. And what is that? Well, historically, reasoning models, they've been built to reason on a sequential basis. Okay, so that means that they're trained to break tasks down step by step and execute them as they go. And this means that if you try to have many agents attack one problem, then they step on each other's toes.

18:43They don't know how to collaborate. And so what Moonshot has done is they've now released a model that is purpose-built to coordinate up to 100 parallel sub-agents. Okay, so a whole swarm. Basically, by rewarding the model for executing things in parallel, they managed to train it to the point where you could do that. And it's done beautifully. where they've sort of released a simple demo, which is, you know, let's say, you know, want to find, you know, top three YouTube creators across 100 niche domains. And then you spawn 100 sub-agents and they all go out and they figure out how to coordinate that between them.

19:19And then you have an orchestrator that sits in the back to make sure that everything is then brought together. So it's mega cool. And it's also ahead of where the US labs are right now when it comes to swarm orchestration. So a step in step forward. Could I call this like another efficiency play? Is this another way of getting more for less with models or some kind of smarter approach, which is, I don't know, some kind of more efficient way of using it? Is that fair? That depends on your definition of efficiency. You know, in most domains, it's more efficient to work sequentially, but it just takes longer.

19:58Right. And so if one person can do something in 10 days, having 10 people work side by side doesn't necessarily bring it down to one day because there's an issue of coordination. There might be duplication. So sequential is sometimes more efficient, but it's also slower. It's always slower. And so what this is about is how can I get 100 things spun up at the same time to complete the task more quickly? It might take more resource, but sometimes speed is of the essence. And so I think what this is about is actually, look, we know that the consumption of tokens is just going to go up, up, up, and the cost of tokens is going to go down, down, down.

20:34So this is a way to throw many more tokens at solving a problem. And of course, the more work we can do in parallel, the bigger challenges we can take on, the bigger problems we can solve across all domains, whether that's writing new computer code, doing new scientific research, solving things in medicine, whatever it is. So it's just a really, really cool thing. Okay. Okay. One of my many conspiracy theories is that China is going to be super good at throwing in any kind of tool, LLM function that is going to mess with the massive growth in the American public markets with AI and techs. If they can just like, just remind the world, we've got an open source version that does this smarter, brighter, better, different.

21:15Don't worry. Don't worry. We've got an open source version that does it. And it feels like this might be part of that pie. Anyway, tech earnings season. We've got ASML, we've got Meta, we've got Microsoft, we've got Tesla. I guess the main question for the room is, where are the learnings? Any inside tracks, any takeaways from the big tech earnings calls this week? Mads, ASML first, maybe? Yeah, so they had a fantastic quarter. Q4 bookings, 13.2 billion. It was a record order book. Chipmakers are clearly keeping, pumping money into CapEx. And it's a clear sign that nobody's giving up on the AI build out just yet.

21:56You know, in 2025, people were saying, you know, is this going to continue? And NVIDIA's order book was full, you know, sold out all of 2026. Well, they're still buying CapEx, right? So the TSMCs of this world are still spending a lot of money on new lithography machines from ASML, meaning that if you look sort of into the future, there is an expectation from the people that have these capex bills that they'll be they'll keep being business and they they buy to order so there's a clear sign that the build-out has lagged well into 2027. Another interesting thing here is the China revenue is still as high as about 20 percent of the ASML revenue and that's although the Chinese customers can't buy the highest-ended equipment they're buying stuff you know both you know older equipment things to service etc so 20 percent of all of asml there's a big market there and we could talk about some of the other companies but i just in case anybody else has well first of all i think it's great when we talk about big tech earning seasons to be actually talking about european company for once right you know that's it is the only one low max to be fair i know i know i know i wanted to start strong but it is the only one we are gonna maybe there's a but there's a couple of other observations to go alongside mads is mads's point so one is for the first time orders orders from memory chip customers surpassed logic customers so this is the first time that that's happened so it's a direct result of basically the desperate need for high high bandwidth memory so ai models are large ram's still ram's still kind of really problematic though isn't it as part of supply chain yeah and so memory i mean memory like memory chip makers are now having a real moment right because this has become a um you know the big three memory makers sk hynix micron and samsung are basically like sold out through to the end of 2026 now so that's definitely something that's going on in the background interestingly also asml announced big job cuts so they're cutting 1700 jobs in the in kind of the white collar kind of head office bureaucratic roles and they're actually hiring a same similar number of engineers so that's good you know a bit of european cut the cut the bureaucrats and bring in the engineers um is everyone else is doing the opposite everyone else is letting engineers go i saw amazon no but i mean yes of course but these are engineers who are building these like very very specialist machines right they're probably basically they're probably you know working on they're working on their product roadmap right for machines in the future uh it's a sign that they they need to actually invest for what's coming next down the line which i guess is a good sign they're still persisting with relatively punchy share buybacks they announced a 12 billion dollar share buyback i mean i'd prefer to see them investing you know in in R &D, but you know.

24:38Yeah, why are they doing that? I don't know why, but I mean, well, they'll keep the shareholders happy, I guess. Sure, but aren't they? Isn't there more to be done? Anyway, okay. Well, think back to what happened last year, right? How do you spend your cash? Well, you can buy stuff with M &A, you can invest in things and they were investing in Mistral. They put their money into that company and had a hiding. out of, you know, shareholders were telling them off and we want share buybacks instead. But they put 1 billion into Mistral, right? They just did a 12 billion buyback. I mean, do you know what I mean?

25:13100%, 100%. And wouldn't you much rather have seen them put 12 billion into investing in things that would grow the economy? Well, yeah, into their own next future generation of products and into other things. And to the ecosystem, into their supply. But that tells you something about whether the management is culpable or whether it's shareholders that are just, you know, lacking vision and ambition. Something's not right. A bit of fear, maybe. Meta, what's happening at Meta, Mads? Well, just juxtaposing the two companies, there's a Meta and Microsoft. So both of them are plowing money like crazy into CapEx, into AI data centers.

25:48Both of them were great on revenue. So Meta, they were up 24 % year in year, nearly 60 billion in revenue. The stock guidance is up. Everything was great. They're not selling models, but everybody is super happy to see them put more money into AI because the story is basically, look, we're going to use the AI and we're using the AI to make our ad business better. And it's really working. And we're making money like bandits. Microsoft, on the other hand, are also making money, but Azure growth has decelerated while CapEx, the spend on CapEx is accelerating. And so the street was worried and saying, listen, you're spending more on CapEx, but your revenue growth is going down.

26:26That's the wrong correlation between the two and therefore the microsoft share was sent down by seven percent despite beating earnings forecast so a tale of two cities there and tesla i mean i think i remember reading this is the first year that tesla didn't make a profit is that right matt it's no no they said they've been lost making before but it's the first time they've had revenue decline so revenue decline because they've i mean basically they've lost a lot of of share byd has overtaken tesla as the world's largest EV seller now. But even so, the stock was up. And Musk, he's basically, he's totally reframed what's happening here.

27:07He's saying, don't worry about the cars. We're no longer a car company. We're pivoting, right? We are a physical AI company. Is that what he's saying? That is what he's saying. Okay, we'll invest. There we go. It feels like this is going to be styled out as a pivot into whatever optimus primes or something well into robo taxis and and to actual into into optimus program right i i if i was tester i would be i would be doing this no this is the smart thing to do i i 100 agree and i think the robot taxis i mean i i think it's i think people underestimate how big this is going to be because if you look around the world yes way more is clearly ahead they're launching in london this year but they're ahead in terms of the rollout of the cars and the safety record and they've got great performance in the streets today, the Tesla still hasn't cracked driverless to the level Waymo has.

28:01But their tech platform is much, much cheaper. And everybody's betting on, or at least all investors are betting on, the moment they crack it, they're going to become unstoppable because they have a much cheaper platform. It's a fraction of the cost of Waymo's platform. And they have so much data from having so many more cars on the roads. So the combination of a different technology architecture that's cheaper to make and all the data they've been accumulating gives them a great position as soon as they crack the last element. Now, can they do it? I mean, listen, people have lost a lot of money betting against Musk.

28:35So I think it's not a stupid bet. Just on the comparison between Meta and Microsoft, I always find it a bit arbitrary, really, because, of course, they're both one of these big companies. But over 80 percent of Microsoft's money comes from business and enterprise. You know, consumer is a side dish, whereas Meta is the inverse of that with a tiny, tiny percentage of, you know, perhaps that coming from VR, you know, one, two percent perhaps, despite all the money they spent and the cool tech. But everything else is it's an ad business. And so I think, you know, macro trends are interesting, but that's where the comparison stops for me.

29:10The other interesting news with Meta, of course, is that they're rolling out this premium service in the UK because of the constraints on data protection. and that's going to dent their profits because I think the price points are$2.99,$3.99 on iOS and Android but that's considerably lower than the ARPU, the average revenue per user they'll be getting for a user in the UK for ads across the board, probably down to 25 % of the ARPU they'd expect. So they're going to be taking a hit on the premium users in order to continue to serve them And I suspect most users won't pay the$8,$9 that they're probably making per user.

29:48Matt, do you know what Meta's core revenue source is? Is it Instagram or do you know which actual product that's the hot one? I'm not sure of the split, but Insta is certainly up there. And surprisingly, Facebook, the legacy platform, I don't know who still uses it, but apparently many people do. Old people like us use it. I've deleted all these accounts in 2014. I haven't used any of them forever, but it's old people. My mum's on it. Best guess is that it's Instagram and Facebook probably between the two. I just think they're probably even this bit. I'm intrigued. I'm going to have a look. And I shouldn't have ended on a bummer.

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30:25We've got Klarna. It moves in down on 30%. I should have stuck this at the front so we could have swept it under the carpet. Klarna's down 30%. What's happening here, Mads? There's a spike in credit loss provisions. kind of a fear that maybe some of the credit that's been given isn't as good as people thought 30 is obviously a surprise i look nothing to see here it's yeah okay okay i mean i also do wonder how any of these euro unsuccessful stories are going to hit hopefully a slight push and wave of ipos but i'm sure we'll just ignore that one nothing to see here right big one big topic loads of things happening this week about europe and europe in a changing world we've talked about the mccosa deal this week or last week maybe we saw the eu india trade deal we are looking at stories of a federated europe the new united states europe we've got starmer in china schmoozing away obviously carney i love that mark carney talk i'm still kind of thinking about him and i see him all over the news cycle still i think it's just great obviously with trump having swipes every now and then it brings him back into the news he'd be touched to hear that well of course he would i mean he is on the hotline you know we we speak often and regularly but i i love the fact that he's just in a very decent human way rather than scott besson being incredibly unpleasant or what luttnick being just like incredibly offensive and abrasive and trump doing what trump does Mark Carney just stood out and very calmly and lovingly and generously just spelled it all out.

32:01And I thought it was just such a wonderful statesperson. Boom! Anyway, let's get back to Europe. Matt, why don't we kick off with this story about the EU integration piece? So this is a telegraph story on the United States of Europe. What's going on here? Yeah. Maybe the sender of the article or the author of the article or the place it was published is a bit of a giveaway. So the Telegraph, they've been warning about the United States of Europe for decades, of course, and they had another article about it recently. And it was sort of written, I don't know whether it's sort of intended to be a, look, this is really happening now or be careful it's happening or it really should happen or whatever.

32:45It was not easy to necessarily figure out, but the way it was positioned was, look, there are so many things in terms of the enlargement, in terms of added spending and initiatives that are being taken to try and make Europe stronger and more self-reliant. When you unpack what's actually happening under the surface, so it is said that there are nine nations that are queuing up to join the union. But in reality, only two are really moving forward with any kind of urgency. And many are in the application queue, but it's just not going to happen anytime soon. So I don't really see the speed there.

33:21In terms of moving from unanimity to majority rule, there's been an attempt to try and do that, for example, around freezing the Russian assets, kind of the 210 billion euros of Russian assets, where a kind of a workaround was done using Article 122, which is not really meant to be used for this sort of thing, but a way was found to freeze the assets, even though Hungary wasn't keen. They're obviously famously in the Putin fan club. Look, I don't think we are really meaningfully closer to the United States of Europe yet, despite what the Telegraph is trying to tell us, we can unpack some of that more by looking at what's happening with some of the trade deals, what's happening with the UK, Starmer's been in China, and then some of the other aspects of, I think you were mentioning, war bonds and other bits.

34:15But yeah, I'm not expecting sort of a new European anthem to roll around next quarter. Well, okay. It's just a term by the Telegraph to sort of stir and annoy. Readership, isn't it? I mean, most of the readership of the Telegraph would be horrified here by the United States. Or happy that we're not in it. But I'm with you, Mads. I mean, we can't even get the basics right, let alone go further down the road. And United States of Europe, we can't get a unified tax policy. We haven't managed to push the EU ink through yet. The European-wide digital economy is still inconsistent and essentially more a pipe dream than it is a reality.

34:57So that's meant to make it easy to sell digitally across borders. So, I mean, until some of the fundamentals are fixed, you know, it's going to remain really difficult to do anything on the big tick items, which feeds, of course, into our next topic about the European military. It's also going to be really difficult. I mean, everyone sits here and around the table, including us, and just has this attitude because if ever there was a moment, you know, I mean, the UK is not out of Europe, right? But like if ever there was a moment for Europe to like galvanize itself and get on with it, like now is the time, right?

35:32I mean, does it I mean, or does it need like one step worse? Does it need like an actual? It needs one step worse. And I feel like I feel like Trump has sort of pushed us to open Bandora's box, but we've not climbed inside yet. And it's almost as if, you know, Trump's policies keep us one step before kind of crisis point where we'd really have to make some painful decisions and actually just get on with it. And we're sort of teetering around the edge, aren't we, about these policies? The ultimate crisis would probably be a hot war then, basically. We may yet see it. There we go. See, we do need conflict.

36:06Lomax, you've got some notes on this, haven't you? No, I'm just saying that ultimately maybe that is what the EU at the moment has got itself to a position where it has achieved many things since its inception. It has, in a way, kind of just been probably the original mission has crept and kept creeping where it needs to the point where it needs an actual formal reset now, which may be to kind of double, triple down on it and say, well, if we're going to do this bloody thing, let's do it properly, right? Which is actually, and, you know, United States of Europe is a branding thing. You can brand it as something different.

36:44But ultimately, like, maybe there is, like, the conclusion is this actually only works where you do adopt a more United States of America type model, right? And this is in a way what Draghi was saying with his report. It's actually we do need to integrate much more tightly. And actually there is a big upside here, which is this is one of the biggest free trade unions in the whole world, right? The combined GDP is a superpower. But maybe you need to have that attitude and people need to just get on with it. Yeah. Europe is extraordinary. Let's not forget. I mean, it's unknown in the history of the world for countries to work together and to create this union that has been created.

37:30So it's very easy to bash, you know, to look at all the negative as it always is. But it's an extraordinary achievement over the last 50 years. Get you being positive. Well, no, I'm just calling it as it is. It is extraordinary. And it has largely prevented any cross-continental war within European countries, which was partly the institution after the Civil War. And if you do layer in initiatives like a capital union, where you actually fuse capital markets, Europeans historically, unlike Americans, are savers, which is both good and bad. But if you actually can consolidate and liberate that and allocate it wisely rather than chasing, for example, example, US equities out of that, there is a huge opportunity.

38:16But I think the disconnect on the, you said the right word Lomax, I think, which is branding. And the United States of Europe is, as far as I can see it, only ever going to be branding. I mean, it's an aspiration, but the problems you see within Europe when it comes to policymaking are rooted culturally quite often. And I've always felt very strongly that Europe is best configured and best at economic ties. And you have to accept that the history is not – the US has a shared history, and even it has problems between its states. And they have a far more coherent history than Europe does between the different countries.

38:57So I think it's a bit of a pipe dream that the United States of Europe, in any form that resembles the United States of America, would ever work or ever come to fruition. But I think we can keep pushing economic ties together. Well, there is an irony in this, by the way, which is a historical reference, was that, you know, the states of America could not have, like, combined. And if they suddenly tried to do it now, it would be a very, very awkward thing to do, right? In the same way that suddenly the European states tried to, you know, combine now. It wasn't easy in the first place, though, Max.

39:28No, no, but ultimately what galvanized them was the British, the common enemy, right? Yeah, back to war. It's kind of a big role reversal now. There is a sort of an age-old tension between in the integration, whether you go broad or whether you go deep. And you go back 25 years, there was a huge discussion about kind of this big bang, Eastwood enlargement. Should we bring in all these new democracies in Central and Eastern Europe into the union? And people on both sides of the debate had strong arguments for and against. You know, in the UK, there was a view that actually we should accelerate that integration eastward because it'll mean two things.

40:03It'll broaden up kind of the market, more market access that'll be good economically, but it'll also make it much harder to go deep on integration so we can avoid this United States of Europe. And of course, one of the implications of that was that we then had the very high level of immigration into the UK that ultimately was one of the triggering factors for Brexit. So it sort of came back to bite us at the time. Whereas on the other hand, there were people saying, listen, we shouldn't expand so quickly. We should take it more slowly and we should go deeper on the integration to move closer to a federal model.

40:37I think like you, Lomax, I mean, if we can find ways to combine and capture markets union and other things, it could unlock so much for us. But without a crisis to drive it, it's hard to see what will get us there. Think about some of the things that enabled the federalization of the U.S. I mean, as you said, it was the common enemy that was Britain, but it was also kind of all the losses of the war bonds that were raised by the U.S. states. And where Hamilton, he sort of pushed for, look, we'll federalize the debt. And in exchange, we'll create a federal reserve bank in the U.S. and we'll federalize a lot of these economic policies because we'll take on the debt the individual states were forced to take on when they fought the British.

41:30So there was that swap. And is it that kind of crisis that will lead to similar integration here? And it probably is. And I think you're right, Andrew. We probably haven't seen something that's at quite the level yet. yet it has to be for us to take that next step. I mean, you can't escape the heritage. And really, it was a Franco-German project designed to stop them tearing each other apart and to stop Germany becoming the only rich country in Europe after the war. That's the truth of it. And there were only very few voices back then who ever were harping on about the United States of Europe.

42:07I'm pretty sure Churchill was one of them. Well, there's a big debate, isn't there, about whether he just viewed it as Europe should go and do this or whether the UK should ever be involved. No, I'm pretty sure he thought Europe should just go and do this and the UK shouldn't be involved. But let's not forget, I mean, he's the child of Britain that was the most powerful country in the world that had a massive empire, and that's not exactly where we are today. Yeah, so then you overlay sort of the kind of Benelux plumbing, but there was never early talk or planning long-term for a European army or even a unified tax system, you know a centralized sort of treasury with any significant power and that that shared political identity was always a sort of botched wasn't it it was never really manifested in a sensible way at the beginning so i don't think that's going to happen but i would love to see europe work better but to lomax's point that probably needs some hard hard questions about where are we going and and changing what's already been put in place and as we know that's extremely difficult does anyone think Starmer's going to come back with anything useful or relevant from China?

43:12Well, other than being able to go there on holiday with no visa. Is the bar that low, Andrew? That's where we're starting. Dan, I mean, a couple of the other news pieces was we had the EU doing the Mercosur trade deal recently, and then the India trade deal this week. And I think it's instructive.

43:34We were Took a long time to get this deal in place, but it's not a bad deal. You have car tariffs down to 10%. Which one is this, Mads? Is this the India one? Is this the EU India? Is the India deal much better than what the UK got? Just showing that market gravity beats negotiating speed. There was this fantasy that the UK could get better trade deals outside of the EU. And that is, of course, a pure fantasy. You can compare that to some of the other countries that are also sort of smaller, you know, smaller countries trying to go it alone. Switzerland and one, but they have more than, in reality, more than 120 bilateral agreements with the EU that are bound by a guillotine clause, which means that if Switzerland terminates one, they will all be cut.

44:17And it means that Switzerland is completely tied to the EU. So I think, you know, this is just another example of what a fantasy this UK going it alone really was. And now, of course, Starmer's going to China and is trying to create better relationships. I think there could be something important coming out of it around financial services. It's been really, really hard for other countries to negotiate with China and get something meaningful out of it. I think the Australians, they got some lobster exports and the Germans didn't get very much at all when they tried. In France, they tried and they got a panda and, I don't know, some pigs they could export, but they didn't get some of the aircraft sales they wanted.

44:59But China genuinely, I think, would like to work with the UK for the London financial services market because they're trying to get the Chinese currency to become a more important currency internationally. And London is an important center for global effects. So there is potentially some leverage there. Will the renminbi become the new reserve currency? Ooh. I'll take that as a no. And hasn't the UK government just agreed to the mega Chinese embassy in London? I think there. Hasn't it? I'm sure there'll be some kissings in the ear. Andrew, one of yours next. We're looking at defence spending in Europe.

45:42Europe is tooling up. Maybe NATO isn't dead. Maybe we can go alone without the Yanks. Where did you want to take this one, Andrew? Well, I think from a startup technology point of view, this trend isn't going away. And I think that's interesting when we look at what we want to invest in, because the military and the defense industry touches every part of technology. And that's good news for the tech ecosystem. I mean, there are some big headline numbers here around, you know, the German industrial will be producing more artillery shells than the whole of the US combined. That's probably a good thing if we do end up in a hot war.

46:16But fundamentally, we're going to have to keep at it for a while and be persistent in our policies and government spending if we want to catch up and be compelling as a war fighting continent. just because we're still so far behind the US on independent capability. You know, if you look purely capability-wise at sort of the tip of the spear, figuratively and literally, you know, we know the key areas that we lack, surveillance and reconnaissance and intelligence, and a lot of that's driven by military satellites. The US have nearly 300. We've got, you know, a couple of dozen. If you're thinking about projecting power and how to attack maybe things deep inside Russia, we have no strategic bomber force the americans have over 150 we have we can't refuel our aircraft but we've got about 150 tanker aircraft versus the americans over six seven hundred tanker aircraft strategic airlift is a problem the americans have hundreds we've probably got less than 100 that you can actually deploy to lift heavy stuff and take it somewhere such as your soldiers or tanks and the same with recon aircraft as well so if you want to go and see what's happening or if you want to you know electronic jamming and that sort of stuff the americans probably ISR aircraft will be nudging 150, will probably be a quarter of that.

47:32So there are lots of areas where companies will be able to make money if the governments decide they want to spend the money. And that includes drones and everything else as well. So, yeah, I mean, they have increased the budgets, but that's got to continue. And that will have to continue for years if we're serious about... It's sticky, it's committed, it's slow. Well, what happens if Trump does not get in? what happens if one of trump's disciples doesn't get it and then there's suddenly a renaissance of sort of rhetoric and friendliness of the united states in three years time we won't believe them andrew that the american public no trump is a symptom not a call well my take is half the population of the states voted this man in this could well happen again i mean i don't believe that anyone is waiting in his wings with his charisma and his ability to do what he's done I don't think Vance for sure can do that.

48:25But, you know, this is not him. This is a country that has shown their potential true colours. So I think the trust has been broken, personally. Whoever comes in, whoever appreciates what. I do think you underestimate how... I mean, look, the headline numbers have been put out there and commitments have been made in the future. I mean, don't forget that if you take the case of the UK, the increase in defence spending as a percentage of GDP has been committed to increase, but increases don't kick in until 2027. Basically, there's plenty of scope for politicians to do what they always do, which is fudge things and kick stuff into the long grass, right?

49:05And if Trump rattles the saber a bit less, if Ukraine cools down, even though the fundamental issue at the core of what Andrew and all of us have been saying is still going to be there, it will be easier for politicians to kick it into the long grass Because, you know, with the aging economies, like problems are going to arise in, quite frankly, in balancing the books in all of these economies going forwards now, right, where you haven't got the economic growth that you need to increase your tax revenue, etc. That could, you know, fund all of this stuff. So I do think that is a risk, Dan, even though at the moment, you know, European defense budgets are scheduled to grow 6.8 % year on year over the next 10 years.

49:50It's like that stuff should be there. It's kind of set. But, you know, there's going to be parliament changes. Lots of things can change these things, right, over time. Well, you've hit the nail on the head, Lomax, which is, you know, what is the first budget to get cut often in these situations if there isn't a war on and there isn't the threat of an imminent war? And that is the defence spending. So I just have, I don't have a huge amount of faith that we're going to be consistent on this stuff. You know, ageing populations. We have supply chain issues which are going to, you know, where we're at the mercy of tariffs or, you know, prices going up.

50:20or rare earth metals. One of the advantages the US has is that it's pretty self-sufficient actually, you know, both in terms of core manufacturing ingredients, but also its own capabilities. And I think Europe is a lot less resilient. One thing I think is good for, I mean, part of the US strategy is basically re-industrialization of the military industrial complex, right? And actually Europe has that as a status strategy too. And now, you know, I think all core components, there's a cap of 35 % of non-European supply chain that can be in critical components within defense, right? So I think that there is an opportunity.

51:03Clearly, some of that will be great for the existing incumbents like Rheinmetall, et cetera. But I think it would also be good for startups building in the space. Mads, who's spending what where? That's a good question. is what you're considering with that, is it sort of countries in Europe or is it US versus Europe? No, US-Europe. US-Europe was my thinking. Yeah, okay. So the US is spending about 900 billion a year on their defense and Europe spends about half right now. And I think that begs the question, what type of defense is it we want and need? I think Mark Rutte, he was out saying 5%, forget 5%, we need 10 % to rival and build up capabilities that are comparable to the US.

51:43But the question is whether that really is what we need. I mean, the U.S. has got awesome, I mean, truly awesome power projection capabilities. They've got 11 carrier groups. They can maintain three full-throttled theatres to project power around the planet at the same time, right? So they can run one in the Atlantic, one in the Pacific, one in the Middle East simultaneously. Is that really what we need in Europe? Just about. I think even they would struggle to do that on an act of war footing. At least that's what they are designed to do. That's what they are. That's the stated aim. And, you know, we have seen Trump saying that he wants to increase their annual spend to 1.5 trillion.

52:26And maybe he feels, well, that's what they need to get there. But that's how they think about defense is being able to project power in that way. Is that what Europe needs? Probably not. I think if we could just defend ourselves to begin with, as you say, Andrew, have some of the capabilities we need to, for example, defend Ukraine. and make sure that we can keep the peace on our borders, that seems like a more important first step. And that probably doesn't need to cost quite as much as 10 % of GDP. So I think there's a path to get this done. But Andrew, I, like you, worry, especially if we don't federalize it, because then it's going to be down to individual states.

52:59No, it needs to. You always have the, well, I can, you know, the freeload of symptom, right? I can cut my defense spending because others are going to take care of it. So can I give you a little bit of a bull case, which is we talk about preparing for the modern warfare, right? And there's tons of good examples in the US now where you've got Enduro, Silicon Valley startup that's developing weapon systems for the modern age, Saronic in the context of the Navy as examples, right? And we don't really have a little bit of that in Europe. You have Helsing, but you know where the real cutting edge technology is being developed in modern warfare is in Ukraine.

53:40as and when there is a resolution that, you know, TBC, what happens, you know, and if there is a kind of more of an assimilation of Ukraine within the EU or within European NATO, whichever kind of how you want to describe it, actually, those guys are at the cutting edge. And if they become kind of part of this more federalized like European system, then suddenly you've kind of, at least for the europeans who are weighed down by the laggard you know primes at the moment you know have this kind of more nimble battle trained battle ready um skill set at its fingertips i mean that's a that's a very um rose-tinted view of it but it's definitely um possible there's potential there's opportunity last on my list was i want to do a quick flyby of the of the social media bans obviously Oz, France, potentially UK banning social media for youngsters.

54:36I was reading some of the science on this and it's not always clear-cut. I think the only thing that is scientifically proven and obvious and extremely worrying is the effect it has on young women and I I was reading one scientific study which incredibly scarily proves that young girls reach puberty faster because of social media. And I read this as that. Well, hang on a second. How the what the heck? How does that even correlate? and I'm going to not do it a great service but it's along the lines of when the body is under stress the biology our biology or young girls biology is designed to reproduce faster because it's not in an environment of safety so therefore it doesn't have the time to grow mature learn it has to have babies sooner so young girls because of the cortisol and the fear response and the anxiety inducing social media are hitting puberty a lot earlier than they were pre-2012 when front-facing cameras hit the iPhone 4S and we were all rather than sharing stuff and finding our network and our friends on social media we became presenters and we became the the object rather than the rather than part of our communities and that was incredibly distressing to read however aside from that, on the social media front, where we're seeing a bunch of the tech giants, even in the US, this isn't a European thing, but even in the US being taken to court for addiction and for problems caused in society and for young people with social media, the science isn't as clear cut as it, whether it's correlation or causation as to whether young people are being distressed and there is more depression, anxiety and stress because of social media.

56:35However, we'll see how the court cases pan out. But did anybody want to take this? I didn't want to spend too long on this, but did anyone, maybe Lomax, have you got some notes on this? There's an interesting rollout here of how this might play out, right? In the context of social media, which is the Europeans, generally the non-Americans are taking this as a, you know, designating this an important public policy matter, and they're coming out with policies and rules around it right and france has just you know banned social media for under 15s america australia did it earlier this year there are certain other countries within europe who are making steps towards it so they're actually doing it at the legislative level america kind of just leave it to the free market effectively and now we have people you know bringing legal cases against snapchat tiktok and settling either settling out of court you know before that happens or it goes to the courts and you know judge orders you know compensation which we know in the us with punitive damages can be extremely high so in a way the americans are laying well people just figure it out horizontally and the europeans and the australians and actually elsewhere in southeast asia you know places are being much more vertical and prescriptive about it which you can you can make an argument for both but to be honest i think you know given i know you say the science may be fuzzy but but i mean my personal view is like social media for under 15s is a very dangerous thing and the government actually should be getting involved yeah yeah i i'm not sure you can ban social media i i think i think teenagers will find a way but that but that's a separate that's the reports in australia that's a separate thing dan i'm just talking about like that's an enforcement like practical matter it's more just like should we as conceptually be endorsing this as a society i i normally veer towards the more libertarian side of things but on on this i'm um i i think something needs to be done What's the point of having a law that just feels like, I mean, isn't it just more optic signaling?

58:35That's the wrong expression. What, because for the reason? Virtue signaling through sort of laws that are unenforceable and don't work. I mean, cursory reports from Australia, a lot of kids are still using it and report it being unaffected. Are they using VPNs or they're putting in a fake age? I mean, I think if you roll out this law and you want it to work and you mean it, then you've got to do it in a way that means it's enforced. I don't know how you do that. but as a second question, otherwise don't bother. It's a 50 million Aussie dollar fine for the social media company that enables it or allows it.

59:09Well, I don't know if that's per case or if that's on a class. I don't know how that's going to be affected, but that's the... Anyway, listen, anyone, Mads, do you have any thoughts on this one? Yes. So in the United States, they've had a way to protect the platforms. They've had a way to protect their ability to put and publish content under this section 230, which effectively is the thing that gets them to get out of jail free by saying, look, we don't take editorial responsibility for the content on our platforms. We just provide a platform and people can post stuff and it's sort of their responsibility.

59:47And what's interesting around some of these new lawsuits that are being filed is that they're not going to the content. They're going to the design choices made by the platform. And we know what they are. They're about engagement maximization, right? It's about creating a model and a set of algorithms that encourage people to spend as much time on the platform as possible. And that is now what is being litigated. So it's a very interesting legal angle that's being taken. We know that TikTok and Snapchat, they've both been settling out of court before trials begun. So they don't want to get anywhere near a discovery or a process here in court.

1:00:26But we also know that there are some holdouts and Meta is one of them. So this is potentially sort of tobacco litigation territory we're coming to. It could be tens of billions in damages. And you could have executives understand, design documents exposed. This could be very, very explosive stuff. So certainly very interesting cases for those businesses. I think especially for Meta. Google, which is also going to be on trial, obviously has a much wider business model. So they'll be less susceptible. But this is 98 % of Meta's revenue here that is being charged. Now, comparing contrast to what's happening in the EU and in Europe, where the EU slapped a fine on X because of the bad stuff that has been happening, especially around Grok and some of the very inappropriate images that have been created there.

1:01:17Mosky sort of did take a view that, well, we'll comply. But he also complained and said, you know, we should disband the EU and their bad people. But it's interesting, right? In the US, you have the courts and litigation. And in Europe, it's been regulatory agencies that have been trying to step up here. I also saw this week very, very quickly that the UK government has pledged to train 10 million UK residents how to use AI. And I thought this was kind of cool. So the domain is aiskillshub.org.uk. It wasn't for discussion unless anybody has any points to raise, but I thought this was quite a speedy response and very ambitious.

1:02:01And I don't know how effective it's going to be. I don't know what the uptake will be. I've not seen in any of the main news feeds, but I thought it was kind of cool. They want to get 10 million people retrained on AI. Before we move on to deal of the week, anyone got anything to say on this? I think directionally, it's right. I don't know if you saw today, it was also discussed that there should be new welfare programs for sectors and people affected by AI. And kind of you're talking about kind of universal income. And I think it's troubling that in a situation where we now, we have more young people on welfare and kind of transfer payments than ever before, right?

1:02:43that we see further welfare programs as the solution here. So yeah, I think definitely training, providing skills, giving people the tools and instruments to help themselves become proficient with the new tools seems like a much better strategy than just trying to force more people or put more people on passive income. I thought that was kind of cool. I'm going to keep an eye on and see what the uptake is. Right, Lomax, deal of the week. Sword, over to you. sword health out of portugal has acquired kaya for 285 million so sword health digital health company now valued at 4 billion has acquired one of its counterparts originally there were three kind of companies vying for supremacy in this in this market which is digital health for a physio effectively physiotherapy and there was a hinge health hinge health um sword health and kaya out of germany hinge health has gone on to ipo last year as you might remember sword health is is on its tail on its tail i think a couple hundred million of revenue now kaya clearly hasn't necessarily quite worked out and it's been acquired for 285 million kaya raised 125 million and it's a great actually great coup for sword health which is becoming a bit of a consolidator now in that market because it gives access to the German market.

1:04:0670 million people covered by the German national health system. And it's regulated as a kind of under the Germany's what they call DIGA, which is the digital health reimbursement pathway. So that's an exciting exit slash consolidation within digital health market. Very nice. Congrats, SORD. Mine was SORD in video and alphabet backing Synthezia at their 4 billion VAL, which I thought was kind of cool. Andrew have you got a deal of the week? Well I actually stole my thunder and some music it's fantastic for Victor and the team and just very painful because we passed on it back in 2019 No! Passed on Elvis Mads did you have a deal of the week?

1:04:50Nothing for you squad Well then we are done my fine humans I will see you next week Thank you so much for your brains and your insights Ciao ciao Bye bye Love the doll

1:05:07I'm sorry.

From the publisher

Welcome back to another episode of Upside 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 opens, as always, with light deal banter, closing jokes, and a reminder that fourth-time founders are still the most bankable asset in venture.

From Saudi Arabia’s surprisingly coherent Vision 2030 to Europe’s chronic inability to articulate a shared mission, this is a wide-ranging conversation about strategy, scale, and what actually forces societies to act.

Along the way, the panel digs into autonomous AI agents that can negotiate car purchases and manage your inbox, the $100B arms race between OpenAI and Anthropic, ASML’s signal on the durability of the AI buildout, and why defence spending is becoming Europe’s most structurally important tech opportunity.

The episode also tackles the uncomfortable questions: whether Europe only moves under pressure, whether the United States of Europe is real or pure projection, and whether social media bans and AI retraining schemes are genuine policy or just optics.

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

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