The New European Sovereignty Stack: Energy, Minerals, Compute

0:09Estate desafir

0:13Vissi Bille General Partner at World Fund argues we're at another such moment, where climate, energy and geopolitical pressure can become a new engine of European innovation. In this talk, we'll focus on what it takes for capital to act with intent, not just conviction. Please welcome Daniel Visevic from World Fund. So I want to take you back into the year 1951. Europe was still in ruins after the most devastating war in human history but Europeans were not only rebuilding their cities we've been rebuilding trust that year six nations signed the Treaty of Paris creating the European coal and steel community because coal and steel were the backbone of war by integrating these industries Europe chose cooperation over conflict And we today should be aware that this was an act of radical innovation, not just technological, but political, economical, cultural.

1:20It worked. Let me share with you a very personal example. So my wife's mother is French, her father is German, a couple unimaginable right after World War II. And fast forward, Silvi married me, a Croatian, Bosnian, German. Now imagine what our children are. They're just Europeans. Back to 1951. Europe chose cooperation over conflict, so we turned crisis into collaboration. And since then, that has become the European way. We don't break under pressure. We build together. And today we must do it again. We are now in something what many call the age of polycrisis. A war in Europe, the climate crisis, tech disruption, supply chain fragility, a fragmentation of the global order.

2:25That's one way to look at it. But look, this isn't the age of polycrisis. It's the age of opportunity for those who know how to collaborate. And this is Europe's strength, collaboration. Europe has always found strength in crisis. And today's challenges are not just tests, they're calls to action. Calls to rethink our economies, to reinvent what European collaboration and sovereignty really mean in the 21st century. Sovereignty today is not just about flags, borders, armies, it's about semiconductors, raw materials, clean energy, data, AI, food systems. But let's face the reality. Europe produces less than 10 % of the semiconductors it consumes.

3:18We import 98 % of our rare earths, 97 % of our lithium, 80 % of solar panels and two-thirds of batteries are made in Asia. Let me be even clearer. The tools of the green digital and industrial future are being built elsewhere. And if we don't reverse that, Europe risks becoming a spectator in a game it helped invent. We've been here before, and we know how to respond. Remember, when the Berlin Wall fell, we didn't collapse under the way of integration. We expanded prosperity to more than 100 million people in Central and Eastern Europe. During COVID, Europe launched the 800 billion Next Generation EU Fund.

4:12So we didn't just invent the leading vaccine in Lightspeed, the leading vaccine that is called by the Americans Pfizer vaccine, but it was invented by BioNTech, German migrants based in mines. So we not only fought COVID, we used this crisis to commit to the green and digital transmission like never before. And in the wake of Russia's war on Ukraine, we cut our Russian gas dependency from 40 % to only 11 % in under two years. So that's an industrial transformation in real time. So when the stakes are high, Europe doesn't just respond, it reinvents. We reinvent ourselves. And today we must act again.

4:59And this time our challenge is to build resilience through investment. But how, given this data? Over the last decade, Europe raised seven times less venture capital than the United States. Only 15 % of European climate tech startups reach Series B funding. In the US, it's 25%. And that funding gap since 2015 is per year over 2.7 billion euros and missed scale-up capital. Here's the hopeful part. Data show that we are picking up and Europe has extraordinary companies ready to lead. I'll just mention three examples. And yes, full disclosure, those three companies are companies' world funds so we invested in.

5:46Cylip is turning battery waste into the raw materials we need by recovering more than 90 % of the critical minerals. AQM from Finland is selling more quantum computers than any other quantum company in the world. Planet A Foods from Germany is replacing cacao with climate-resilient European crops. So they are disrupting one of the most vulnerable and deforestation-linked supply chains in the world. And these are not just scale-ups. These companies are growing to become the pillars of European sovereignty, and they're not alone. What we need is bold policy, and it's on the way. You heard that. What we also need is ambitious scale-up capital.

6:32It's also on its way. We need private partnerships that amplify the opportunity in the making. So, good science, but above all, we need a shared mission. to invest in those critical technologies that serve European values, that serve European resilience and recreate our leadership. This is not a time for hesitation, it's a time for movement, missions and moonshots. Let's create hundreds of companies like Cylip, IQM and Planet AFoods. Let's make Europe not only the continent of innovation, but the continent of industrial scale. I began with the year 1951, when Europe, devastated by war, chose to build peace by binding coal and steel.

7:16Europeans decided on collaboration, and that act of radical innovation reshaped the future and made my own European family possible. And we've done this again and again. We've responded to the old crisis with wind and sun. We responded to a divided continent with unity and to a pandemic with the largest green stimulus in our history. So the story of Europe is not one of stagnation, it's one of reinvention. We know how to turn crisis into collaboration and competitiveness. But the next chapter isn't written yet. It depends on whether we choose to lead again, to choose to invest, to collaborate, to believe.

7:57So remember, Europe doesn't break under pressure because we build together. Now's the time to do this again. Thank you.

8:11venture performance has traditionally been measured in returns alone but that definition is increasingly questioned heidi linbold partner at pale blue dot argues that every company and every fund has impact whether acknowledged or not in this talk she'll explore what great really should mean in european venture and why responsibility not just performance must be part of how success is judged. Also vice versa, of course. Please welcome Heidi Lenmo from Pale Blue Dot.

8:44If two funds both have top quartile performance, are they equally successful? For decades, we've been measuring success in VC almost exclusively by financial success. DPI, TVPI, IRR. With 2x fund being a good fund and a 3x fund being top quartile. But times have changed and industries have matured. And with that, with information being transparent, we do need a new way of looking at success. Let me be clear. Performance will always matter. Without returns, the rest isn't possible. Now, but performance isn't excellence. Performance is the bare minimum to stay in the game. And if you're compromising performance, then we're not playing the same game.

9:40Now, Venture Safe Society. 75 % of all of the value in the IPO market in the US have gone through venture-backed companies, or come from venture-backed companies. 92 % of R &D spending. In the US, 12 % of the private workforce work for VC-funded companies. And in Europe, that's slightly lower. It's at 5%, but it is still significant. So not only does venture shape societies, venture is actually part of deciding who gets funded at all. So that means that capital is not neutral. Every check that you write actually is a vote for what you want the future to look like. With that comes responsibility.

10:26And with that comes risk. Now, we've seen more than before venture funds getting scrutinized for what they invest in and whom. So more than ever before, venture funds are having to really think about their cultural risk and what that actually looks like. Now, I want to propose a new way of actually looking at success. And I want to expand on this formula and what we before have been saying. Now, it starts with brand. Brand is no longer only your website or your logo. Brand is what people feel when they think about your brand. Brand is behavioral patterns that are tracked over time and become consistent.

11:15Then we have values. Values is what you do when things go wrong. So values is what you do behind the door, is how you act. the beliefs you have and what actually guides you. Now, things always go wrong, and this is when we see what matters. In venture, we often say that you should only back your winners, but actually what you do behind closed door when things are not going well is also part of building who you actually are and what your future will look like. And then we have impact. Now, impact, you can look at two levels. You can look at the impact that your firm has on VC, And then you can look at the impact that your portfolio has on society.

11:59On a VC level, we often think about, like, what is the actual impact that our firm can have? How do we shape society by how we act and what we say? We believe that climate is the biggest macroeconomic shift that we're going through. And if we can actually prove that to LPs, then we will have outsized returns. that also means that we can funnel more money back into climate, which actually will have a massive impact. And then on a portfolio level, impact is anything by who you invest in and what they do. How do they treat their employees? What do they do with the money when they're successful? And then, of course, what problem are they solving and how is that impacting society?

12:41So there's multiple ways of looking at impact. So I want to put these together and have a new scorecard where success equals performance times trust. And trust stands for brand, values, as well as impact. Trust compounds returns, and the returns compound trust. So it looks something like this. Where low performance and low trust funds, gone, out of the game. Low performance and high trust, I don't know if you can see this, irrelevant, well-liked, value-driven, but they become irrelevant very fast. And then we have high performance and high trust. One cycle wonders. You'll see these firms, they look good, but they won't last.

13:32And then we have high performance and high trust. And these are enduring firms that you'll see last for at least three cycles. So with performance and trust, I think we have a new way of actually looking at what venture success looks like. Where it's not just what you do, but also how you've earned it. And that to me is meaningful. Thank you. Now, Rina, let's first get the introduction of you out of the way. You are, of course, representing Regeneration VC. We've had regeneration here at the conference before. you are a fund dedicated to circularity. But maybe do your own introduction and then we'll dive into it.

14:16Absolutely. Great to be here. So Nareenam Natsakanian, I'm partner and chief impact officer at Regeneration VC. And before venture, I was more an institutional capital and pension funds and asset manager. So I can bring a bit of two worlds to this conversation. So now let me ask both of you the real hard question. When times get tough, don't these good values fall out of the window and the brand and all this, all you really need is the money? Money will always be there, as in those high-performing funds will always win. But when you start comparing high-performing funds, it's going to go to values, it's going to go to how you actually behave, it's going to go to what reputation lasts.

14:57So again, I think when you'll have those one-cycle wonders, You'll have those great funds that do well in bad times. But if they don't build up a brand and reputation where founders will choose them, I don't think it's going to last. I think it's important. You know, the past performance is important, but past performance is not guaranteed a future performance. We all know that, but you tend to forget. And if you think about, you know, what are we actually funding as VC? Now, we're funding more linear and extractive business models that will cause overconsumption. and we're already crossing seven of the nine planetary boundaries?

15:34Or do we actually want to fund the new type of world and technologies which are more regenerative and circular and where we can actually live and survive as species within the humanitarian boundaries in the long term? And that's where it also comes to, you know, we were talking earlier this morning about getting more pension money into venture and how do we do that? So if you think about from the pensioner and pension fund perspective, You do want to offer your beneficiaries good returns, but you also want to retire in a livable world. And I think that that's important to think, you know, what are we actually funding?

16:07And that's where the other factors like impact, values, trust, brand, your impact and the portfolio you're funding come into play much more. DPI is objective. Performance is objective. How much money do you actually produce? Brand, trust, values. these words are a bit harder. As an example, I think some would say that the brand value of Peter Thiel and Founders Fund is incredible, and also the performance. And there are others out to them. Peter Thiel is a massive turnoff, and they would never touch that fund. Can you talk a bit about how you think about the lack of objectivity in this scale? the thing is I mean you will obviously attract the type of founders that like your brand you will attract the kind of people who are attracted to your values and who want to create that kind of world and in the same way even if we have great performance us being a climate fund I don't think we'll ever attract people who don't believe that climate change is real like I don't think there's a certain political parties that I don't think ever will appeal to us And that is just the way it is.

17:19But saying that, I do think that you have to have a certain type of behavior that appeals to people everywhere. Whether you believe climate is real or not, people are going to expect to have investors that you can call. Investors that will actually pick up your phone, that will actually care about their founders even when things are bad. And we've seen so many funds fall because of this. They just haven't gotten the basic rights. They've behaved badly at board meetings. They just didn't give a shit. They just wanted the money. And now a lot of those fund managers have had to leave because it's hurting the brand.

17:52So I do think that even if it's really hard to define what does good behavior look like, it's really hard to say what are the good values, et cetera, I do think that there's certain behavior, there are certain things like kindness and decency and integrity that we kind of expect from everyone. and I think we're going more of that way of actually defining what does that look like and what do we expect from our investors Marina, do you want to comment on it? I think also on the question of how do you measure other factors if you look at the impact, you can absolutely measure and have different KPIs we focus on circularity, if you look at emissions for example, half is energy and climate and the other half is also materials You know, what are we actually, what kind of materials are we building from?

18:39And can we make that more sustainable? You know, how do we deal with waste? So you can absolutely look at, you know, what are some of the biggest problems in terms of emissions, linear resource waste, you know, toxicity. I mean, that's another area. We haven't been talking that much, but it's super important. And looking at how can you have solutions which are actually replacing toxics that have more sustainable material, turn waste into new products and keep materials in circulation. So that is something that you can also measure and track, and you can have your financial performance and you can have impact performance.

19:12And I think the companies that would really hope that they do the best in the coming years are where you can have significant growth and financial success, both financially but then also scaling impact, so addressing some of those big critical problems. Heidi, you propose a framework here. Do you feel that LPs are sophisticated in this way? Do you see LPs today investing with a framework similar to that in mind? Or do you feel that there's still a long way to go? I have been very positively surprised how people have, and a lot of LPs have really started asking more for the brand and really started looking beyond performance.

20:00And like I said, performance will always matter. We shouldn't discuss whether we should compromise on that to have an impact. To me, that's not a conversation. People do want to make money, and that's why they end the game. But I have seen a trend on that. And as an example, we've actually turned a table. We do these things called value alignment assessments with our LPs. So we interview our LPs to try to figure out what their values are, what they think about diversity, how they invest, where they put the money that we return. So we actually have an idea of if you're going to give us money and then put it into oil, then it doesn't feel like we're doing a great job.

20:37So we're actually turning the table, and a lot of people are really appreciating that. They actually are starting to look at what they do in-house, and I feel like we need to change the game by start asking these questions. And I mean, so much crap has been done by the VC industry when we haven't been asking these questions. And now, like I said, when all this information is available, people are being called out. So even whether you care or not, it kind of becomes a necessity to start thinking beyond performance. Marina, any final remarks? Yeah, no, we see that as well. I think with LPs, we have increasingly mission-aligned LPs who believe in our vision and the future.

21:17So I think that LPs play a huge role in determining how and where is capital allocated.

21:29Critical minerals sit at the center of Europe's energy transition. Yet, supply remains constrained by cost, geopolitics, and environmental impact. Biology is emerging as a credible alternative to traditional extraction. Dr. Isabella Fendrick, partner at Nucleus Capital, will explore how bio-based approaches can unlock critical minerals and what this means for investors backing the next generation of industrial biotech. Please welcome Dr. Isabella van Rooij from Nucleus Capital.

22:02Imagine tiny microbes digging for rare earth minerals. Sounds crazy, right? it's not quite true that microbes really use picks and shovels to extract minerals from the earth. But in a sense, microbes have been mining for more than thousands of years. There's evidence that China used the oxidative capabilities of bacteria to unlock the copper production substantially. So long before humanity built the first huge machines, the first huge excavators, nature has already been providing solutions to mining. And what's fascinating is that those very same microbes could hold and unlock for the next industrial revolution.

22:57Fast forward today, we are racing to decarbonize our production systems. So we're looking into battery technology, into wind turbines, into solar panels, into grid build-out. But the challenge here is all of these technologies rely on critical minerals such as cobalt, lithium, copper. And there we have supply chains that are anything but green. So we are strip mining deserts. We are draining brines and we are shipping millions of tons of metals and rocks across the globe in vessels that are powered by petrochemicals. And what is more severe is that these very same supply chains are under tremendous stress due to ever declining resource quality.

23:51So while we already have five countries controlling the majority of the production of these minerals, we even more have a challenge around the sources of these minerals because the quality of the resources is degrading. We have lower and lower concentrations in the rocks, lower and lower concentrations in the brines. For example, copper, 70 % of copper is locked into low-grade copper, meaning you need to move more tons of rocks to really extract the target copper. And that implies that we need more electricity, we need more water, more chemicals to extract the same minerals. So clearly we need a better way of mining And here is a fascinating insight on biology Biology really holds a huge potential for us To increase our production capacity And to become more efficient and more economical in mining And today I'm going to present to you three exciting technologies in biology So number one is using living organisms, microbes to really separate rock from metal.

25:05This is already being done in copper. There was a big announcement last week on Rio Tinto now, working on a collaboration. Secondly, there is protein engineering, where you use the cell's tiniest building blocks to use the magnetic structures to extract minerals such as lithium and magnesium and manganese from liquid waste streams. and that has a huge impact because you need less chemicals in that process. And then thirdly, you could use plants and you have plants that accumulate nickel from underground. They accumulate it through their roots and bring it up so that you can harvest the plants and ultimately refine for the nickel.

25:48So this sounds like science fiction, right? The reality is there are already exciting companies working on these technologies so in microbial inoculation there's a company called Endolith from the US and they're using biology to really already alleviate the production and really increase the yields in copper mines there's protein engineering companies such as Magmatic Bio they use the proteins to extract the manganese from lithium-rich brines and there is a company in France called Genomines that has engineered plants in order to extract nickel from underground. So biology really provides a potential to be the backbone of the next industrial decarbonization route.

26:42We see enablement in increasing the yields in ever-declining resources. We see a potential to reduce harmful side effects. And we can even use biology in urban mining such as recycling. If you are an innovator looking into bold solutions tied to biology or industrial decarbonization, industrial resilience, come talk to us.

27:13Nuclear is re-entering the European energy debate. Not as ideology, but as a question of scale, resilience and baseload reality. As power demand rises and decarbonization timelines tighten, investors are being forced to reassess old assumptions. Jordan Biliot, principal at IQ Capital, will make the case for nuclear and explain where venture capital fits in a sector long dominated by infrastructure and policy. Please welcome Jordan Biliot from IQ Capital. My name is Jordan from IQ Capital. We are an early stage venture capital firm based in London. Thank you to Andreas for the invite to speak today.

27:54I made the mistake of mentioning small modular reactors to Andreas, and now here I am to make the case for the nuclear industry at large. The case for nuclear for me is actually a case for climate and net zero, and that speaks directly to our European values. It's also a case for re-industrialization and European prosperity. And it's a case for energy security and our sovereignty. Let me start by asking everybody here, raise your hand if you think that we've made progress in Europe in the last few decades towards net zero. Raise your hand if you think that's true. In the UK, we've almost totally phased out coal, and renewables now account for around 45 % of our energy usage.

28:44Over the last few years, countries like Europe, countries like Spain, Portugal, Germany and Scotland have had 100 % renewable days. But what have we really done over the last few decades? I would argue that we have de-industrialized. We have outsourced our manufacturing, we have outsourced our primary industries, and with it we have outsourced our carbon emissions. And in fact, our carbon consumption has increased. Of course, we have chronically under-invested in our public infrastructure. And today, we're outsourcing AI and we're outsourcing tokens. Data centers, factories, hospitals, trains, all of these need reliable baseload energy.