This Week in European Tech: 100 episodes in, Europe’s tech reality check and what comes next

27:49Lomax Ward:Yeah, for sure. Andrew, any notes on the American chunk of data before we move on to UK Europe? Well, the biggest thing that changed is that Trump came back into power. You know, sort of a third of the way through when you started recording. It's what, 730 days or something since you started recording this and he came in on a third of the way through that. So a lot of the changes and a lot of what we see now has been accelerated by him. I think AI saved him, right? I mean, can you imagine what his tenure would be had AI not propped up the markets? I mean, I don't know. It would all be very, very different politically for him.

28:26That's probably true. But you also wonder how some of the other geopolitical trends would have been impacted. I mean, technology is now foreign policy. And had that been accelerated by Trump or would it have been different? I think it was somewhat inevitable because of the power of the technology and what's involved. But I think it's been generally accelerated.

28:44Lomax Ward:Lomax, anything on the American piece before we move into UK Europe? I've got some very high level things that I've just jotted down. And I think that kind of touched the US, also Europe as well, but not specifically Europe. So just think about it. What's happened in two years? LLMs have just like absolutely continued to smash it out of the park. And you can look at you basically got$2 trillion companies now as the lighthouse companies. Like that's phenomenal. At some point in 2024, you could remember when is this going to end? Well, it hasn't ended. And like all of the energy and oxygen largely has been taken out of funding markets by those companies.

29:19And so the power law of like those companies is insane, right? Obviously, we had the SpaceX IPO, the biggest IPO in the history of ever, 75 billion raise, you know, 1.8 trillion valuation. Obviously, went up to 2.5, 2.6. Like that would have been not inconceivable. But if you told us about that in 2024, we'd be like, OK, well, I mean, there's a lot of things got to go right for that to happen. Hugely impressive. What we've seen high level is the segue now. You don't read it so much on the front pages, but we're seeing it in the venture markets. It's the segue now from, and you guys, I know, do a lot of this at SuperSeed, from AI to robotics, right?

29:58The move from the software world to the physical world. You know, you obviously got like Jeff Bezos' Prometheus company now as like one of the lighthouse companies in that segment in the US. So I do think that obviously we're seeing more and more rounds of industrial robotics. There's a whole wave. Well, we're going to talk later

30:16Lomax Ward:about the largest ever seed round in Germany, exactly in this space. We'll talk about that later. Then you've got AVs have had an absolute moment over the last two years. Do you remember when the automated vehicles, right? Do you remember when robo-taxis and everything had a major winter about four or five years ago? In the last two years, they've come on leaps and bounds to the point where we now, as of this year, have them in Europe, right? For the first time, at least in London. Obviously they've been rolled out more and more in the US. So that is becoming more and more of a thing. So that's like stormed on.

30:45Biotech was absolutely dead two years ago and is actually, admittedly from a very, very low base, has been one of the best performing segments in the last 24 months, right? Slowly a bit more oxygen being breathed into that market. We've just seen this deal we talked about earlier in psychedelics, but more, it's been a lot of M &A activity driven by a lot by GLP-1s. I mean, GLP-1s, what a story in 24 months, no? Absolutely outrageous. And as GLP ones, don't forget, yes, it's about getting fat people thin, but it's about a lot more than that. You know, it's the first longevity drug. It's about cardiovascular health, which is the biggest killer of people.

31:20So ultimately, that is a huge story. The resilience trade is still absolute. And this is something that I was a little bit skeptical of. All of these VCs running around plowing money into defense companies, resilience companies like that's got to end at some point. that has carried on and apps the valuations now you're seeing in resilience companies whether it's like pure defense or dual use or sovereign sovereign capabilities is also insane right it

31:46Lomax Ward:does depend on how you define some of these things i mean but kinetics aside resilience could be so many things no sure i'm i'm defining it very very broadly but if you look at like kinetics i mean i think company that andrew's invested in to doff my cap to him castilian has like you know raised fabulous amounts of money. We'll talk about Helsing a bit later. Obviously, Andrual is now closing to 100 billion in valuations. Saronic now, the kind of Andrual for the Navy is a multi-decker corn or at least a single-decker corn. So ultimately, that trade in venture has really, really carried on. And then if you wanted to take, so that's all been like stuff moving up and to the right, stuff that's either been flat or down is actually sort of outside of tech, but it's energy problems.

32:31And I know we're going to talk about Europe. Energy problems remain a major, major, major issue, right? Particularly in the global space. So that's a big problem. And the other one is like the geopolitical risk, as Andrew alluded to, with Trump, like has just been nuts in the last two years. No. And so obviously had Trump come in, you know, had Ukraine carry on, you've had Iran.

32:48Lomax Ward:We've taken a lot of behavior for granted that is absolutely crazy. And I feel very strongly that we sometimes wake up, read the news cycle and just go, yeah, he's done this. and it's like there's some version of normality around it. We will look back on this in years to come and wince, I think. This is just a lot of crazy time. I don't know. I mean, you look forward and now I'll shut up in a minute, but then suddenly you have the prospect of Le Pen getting in in France. Do you know what I mean? I don't think this is necessarily going to end. I sometimes feel like we sometimes felt some of this stuff might be a bit ephemeral, a bit temporal.

33:21None of the stuff that I've just talked about has actually appeared to be particularly ephemeral. I know we're in a bit of a bull market and I'm sure like things will call off and some things will lose their kind of vogue status. But certainly, if you look back on 24 months since we started, it's actually been, I mean, we got lucky when we started the podcast, to be honest, because what are 24 months to cover, no?

33:44Lomax Ward:Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, I remember when tech pre-ChatGBT was always a pretty slow news week. and for so many reasons we have had some bumper topics each week to discuss. But listen, let me move into UK-Europe because I never know whether to put the UK in Europe or not, but I'm just going to talk about Europe and I am going to include the UK in that bucket. So FTSE, 8.2, then 10.5 now, up 27%, which isn't crazy that far off the Yanks. The stocks, Europe 600, 5.24 then, 6.43 now, up 23%. UK, 10-year gilts, four, roughly then, nearly five now. BB base rate, 525 then, 3.75 now. UK inflation, CPI, 2 to 2.8.

34:32Lomax Ward:So we haven't done that badly on the inflation side. European unicorns, 500 then, 717 now. Decacorns, maybe a handful, including Northvolt, which we can bypass, 11 now. Now, H1 venture funding in Europe, 29 billion compared to 45 billion, up 53%. However, 10x smaller than the US, and we all know why. AI share of European VC was 18 % two years ago. Now it's about 54%. I guess that depends on how you define an AI business. One business to highlight, Revolut, 45 billion then, 75 billion now. Good for them. Helsing raised at five, now raising at 18, Bill. Europe's share of global VC, 16 % now. Sorry, 16 % then, 8 % halved as absolute rose.

35:26Lomax Ward:So that's quite an interesting thing to maybe duck into. And as Mads, as you mentioned, Bitcoin from 60 to 60, roughly, peaking at 125. And the Chinese open source, they have absolutely made some inroads. But we're going to talk later about whether they're going to continue to do that. But Mads, anything on the euro side, highs, lows, good, bad, indifferent, what would you, how would you frame the Europe picture? Yeah, I mean, I think it's what's interesting is that while the European venture market has really grown, as you outlined in terms of the capital invested, in terms of the unicorns created, in terms of all the good numbers we'd look at, the share of capital has still halved from 16 to 8%.

36:08and most of the gap is really down to two Silicon Valley companies, right? The Centropic and OpenAI that have been absorbing masses of capital.

36:16Lomax Ward:Well, a lot of this is skewed. A lot of these figures are skewed by these mega deals, aren't they? So I think that has to be. And also the other thing that has to be taken into account is that a lot of the deals that we saw in Europe were actually American investors. And I don't know, we haven't quite covered that. And I don't know if we should, but carry on, Mads. I didn't mean to interrupt. No, you didn't. That's okay. You should. That's part of your job. I think it's all good. US capital investing in Europe is fine, right? It's great. They're great opportunities. I think that just validates the quality of founders that are here.

36:46I think the test over the coming years will be to turn even more capital into productive companies. I think we're seeing that grow. We have been showing that Europe can produce lots of great unicorns, decacorns, as you're saying, and now we need more capital.

37:00Lomax Ward:That's my takeaway. that my takeaway is we have absolutely proven that europe deserves its place on the map with regards to quality of founders and businesses whoever invests wherever they end up i think that has been for the last two years that's been my one key time i think you're you're right you're producing more champions but we're still losing global market share so like capital's capital's coming back more capital's coming in but global relevancy for those companies we're not there yet Andrew, don't you think that will change as we start moving away from hyperscalar focus and foundational focus into applications?

37:35Well, first of all, that's a great question is, are we going to move away anytime soon from that foundational technology? I think for the near to medium term, the winners are still going to be those that can keep building and leapfrogging on the technology side. another way to look at this is is through the things that that that make this possible and make the ecosystem possible because you know our winners got bigger bigger but as we've just talked about the the overall ecosystem like comparative to what else is going on in the world hasn't i think europe doesn't have a startup problem to your point dan we've got the smarts we've got the founders we're even starting to feel like to have their ambition but we don't have a startup problem we have a trillion euro pension allocation problem.

38:18You know, we're back to the hobby horse problem.

38:21Lomax Ward:Lomax, AI went from 18 % to 54 % of European VCs. Is that too much, you think, or too little? A, what's your broad kind of big picture take? And then maybe come back to the AI in Europe question. The broad picture take is largely the same. It is largely similar to what you guys are saying. And very simplistically put by me now is we in isolation in europe look at the improvement in many of the metrics in terms of unicorns created decacorns created funding rounds and then more subjective like quality of founders and quality of projects and companies and we think it's kind of improving by 25 50 per year whatever whatever number you use but the problem is is that that you know the goalpost has just moved been moved so far by what's gone on in the States.

39:13That if you take in the global context and you talked about the number of European number of funding dropping, even though it went up 50%, it actually went from 16 to 8 % as a proportion of global funding. It's like, just like, it feels like technology. And I know Andrew kind of like loves to sort of say, you know, technology basically is everything. Like, you know, technology is politics, like it is everything. And well, I mean, yeah, you know, which is, and it's increasingly becoming the case. And so the turn of the wheel that we've just gone through in the last three to four years, driven by LLMs, but now going into, you know, robotics and the net, like space tech and new generation of hardware and energy technologies, Europe feels like it's missing the boat again.

40:00So I do, and I don't want to be a bear. And it is consistent, unfortunately, with the outside ventures thesis. It's like, unfortunately, I do worry that Europe is becoming a kind of like emigrant thesis, which is that actually, yes, we're producing unbelievable people. That's better. And that's the one thing that all of us are consistently seeing on the ground. Like better people are being drawn to entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurs themselves like get better and better. And that is amazing. But I just feel it's very, very, very hard. against the backdrop that we have of this lack of ability to put risk capital to work in meaningful quantities it's just a we're kind of fighting this like battle with an arm an arm tied behind our back i'll take the other side of that i don't think this mirrors what we see on the ground at all okay if you get back five years i'd absolutely agree with you that the the route the traffic was all one way that the proportion of serious founders we see in europe now saying we want to build in Europe has exploded.

40:59The amount of capital that's coming in has exploded. The amount of unicorns and decacorns that are being built. We had eight new decacorns in two years. That's phenomenal. That's twice as much as we had in all history going up to those past two years. Yeah. No, no, no. I will totally take the other side of that. I don't think it at all is going to the way you're saying. I think it's the opposite. I think we are seeing the time.

41:22Lomax Ward:But isn't it a volume thing, Mads? But isn't Lomax's point? that it's the volume and the speed of change. It's a relative. My point is also, you've had eight Udeka-corns in Europe. How many Udeka-corns have you had in the US in the corresponding period? So the goalpost just keeps moving. So if you want to create a Deka-corn company out of Europe, sure, it's easier to do it now than the past. But arguably, anyway, I don't like... Can these companies stay European or can they stay UK? Are the government contracts going to come? You see the US moving ahead as it does. And to Lomax's point, we don't seem to have a clear path ourselves.

42:03We seem to sort of belatedly copycat US strategy. And until political leaders understand that these foundational technologies, AI, space axes, quantum energy, are the only game in town, we're going to still be in trouble. We're going to be a customer, not a builder. We won't catch up. and we need to be on a war footing for this there needs to be i think lomax's urgency is absolutely right because mad we've seen a great improvement but improvement is not enough and we tend to look at this we tend to go oh but look how well we've done aren't we doing well and it's like it doesn't matter like whether internally we're doing well versus ourselves what matters is whether we're doing well versus what's happening outside of europe and whether we're able to whether whether you believe that independent sovereignty is important or not, right?

42:47Lomax Ward:So let's look at what the next 12, 24 months is going to look like and how the world and Europe specifically will look in 2028. Dan, can I just, because I've been very negative, right, on all of that. Can I just wrap up with a couple more positive things? Are you going to upside us? Upside us, baby. I've been upside you on a couple of areas. One is I think the Germans have really started to get it right in the context of defence. You know, it's how they actually have money with the, you know, it's just inertia. Right. A lot of what we're talking about. I get the rate of change in that. But a lot of that is PR from the Yanks.

43:22Lomax Ward:A lot of that is going to spend a gazillion dollars. A lot of that doesn't happen. So I don't want to conflate the PR from the American machine with the reality. I think that I think we I think that's quite dangerous to do. But crack on. No, there's that. And then I would say also you look at things like what happened with Proxima Fusion, which has gone from basically a pre-seed startup to a two and a half billion company with like actual like offtake or interesting arrangements with the German government in terms of like a future customer, like that's pretty unheard of. And that's pretty cool.

43:55And if that happened, like if that was magnified or multiplied 10 times across the continent, then that would be pretty awesome. So there are glimmers of hope.

44:07Lomax Ward:There is a lot of money and there is a lot of emotional money and we can we can sense it in conversations that we're having not only is there a lot of new funds new structures coming in across europe and a lot of change thinking but there is a real drive across the continent to go all right all right we're going to do it now and i feel to your point andrew there is a little bit not war footing might be a bit strong but there is a little bit of a an fu footing and i think that's going to carry it's just a period of time so let's do it let's talk about the next two years and companies, themes, topics, we can pick up on whatever we want.

44:43Lomax Ward:I'll start with my quick, I picked out three. We've, we, in our docket that obviously, you know, listeners and viewers can't see, we've got maybe 15 line items of things that we could choose from that we thought we're going to change from, you know, market prices, specific companies, sectors, spaces, governments, whatever it might be. I picked on Bitcoin, Apple and Google and SpaceX, just pick three. And I'm going to ask each of you to pick your sectors, spaces, things you think are going to change for the better or for the worse globally and for Europe over the next two years. So I reckon Bitcoin's on its way to zero.

45:16Lomax Ward:I don't think it will hit zero. I think there will always be the believers and the hodlers in there. But I think it's going to become structurally irrelevant. And I think by 28, it's going to be sub 20k. And that's probably the level we're going to bounce around at where people are going to be looking for some kind of utility. But I reckon that's going to be happening relatively quickly by 28. I reckon, and I know you guys are going to punch me in the face for this one, but I reckon Apple and Google are going to win AI. Now, what do I mean by win AI? Because that's a very big statement. But I think they're going to show really strong lines by 28 of leading the AI war, if you want to call it that.

45:53Lomax Ward:Apple will absolutely own personal on device. I've been using the latest iOS 27, Siri. And I know one point over the last two years, I've banged on it too much, but it is now at promise. Siri is now fulfilling the brand promise of being an incredibly useful assistant on my device. Is it still clumsy? Yes, it really is. But it does incredible sequencing. It offers incredible insight across my entire, all the apps. Well, not the third party so much, but they're going to come and I think they're going to own it. And I think they're going to become the gateway for everyone else as well. So Apple is going to own that gateway to the world for AI on the personal side.

46:34Lomax Ward:And I think Google is going to do the same on the enterprise. I think with their distribution, they're going to watch whatever's going on. And thank you very much for all of the insight. But they still own the mega chunk of distribution. And I think they're going to win it. Not Microsoft. I think they're going to be doing Clippy and co-pilot awfulness and continue to do that. I think Google will crush it. But SpaceX, I think, will halve by Christmas, but bounce to list price by this time in 2028. I think they're not going to hit any of their sexy, cool things in their prospectus. But I do believe they're going to become critical sovereign infrastructure.

47:09Lomax Ward:I don't know what that will mean when there's a Democrat as the president in the US. I don't know how Elon is going to fit into that picture. That's going to be a really interesting grab your popcorn time. But I think SpaceX is going to absolutely take a bomb and then come back to being really critical sovereign infrastructure. So they were my three. Mads, did you want to go next? Do any of your predictions by any chance have got anything to do with the fact that you love Apple and hate Bitcoin and hate Elon Musk? Yes. Yes. Dan calls his run on Bitcoin market. I have to project. I remember losing to say, you know, Trump isn't going to win the last one.

47:49Lomax Ward:I remember losing 100 quid to you, Mads, because you're like, nah, Trump's going to do it. I'm like, absolutely not. Project, project, project. I have to emotionally own this because I can't cope with a lot of this shit. Anyway, Mads, over to you. Okay. Well, we talked about pensions and we talked about the lack of capital. I think that in two years' time, it'll still be less than 2 % allocated to venture in other things. And it's just going to be too much in our shed. And it'll be too hard for them to figure out how to do that at a bigger scale. we said there'll be no AGI in 2026 I think that's certainly been right so far 2028 I would say we are frighteningly close to some really really smart models Fable is scarily intelligent Unreasonably I cannot believe I mean I'm so sad we're going to lose it in a couple of days but I think I'm going to tune in anyway but when I ask it to do things and whatever they are it will often say I don't think you meant that Dan I think you meant this I think this is a smarter way of doing that I'm like oh my I'm so sorry.

48:47Lomax Ward:Yes, you're absolutely right. It's unreasonably smart. It's such a scary gift. Right. And we are only three and a half years into this. I mean, this is going to go so much further. And it still accelerates. It's exciting. And that's one of the reasons why I thought it's got to do the two bets, right? Anthropic and OpenAI, where they're going to sit two years from now. And I would say Anthropic, it feels like a fairly safe bet. It's going to be above the bill. OpenAI, I honestly don't know. I saw San, he was out with a tweet this morning saying, look, I know we had a bit of a shit show over the last year.

49:17The next year is going to be great. And here's why. And he outlined some of the stuff they've been doing, some of the stuff they're working on. Did you buy it? Listen, he's a phenomenal founder and entrepreneur. He's got incredible technology. And he's right at the center of the most exciting and biggest tech revolution of history. So do I buy that there could be an interesting business? Absolutely. But there are pitfalls. So I honestly don't know which way it's going to go.

49:41Lomax Ward:But it's great. There's competition, right? It's great. Maybe Miramirati and the thinking, maybe there's other things that will come through. Who knows? But it's great that there's this, I mean, 5.6 and Fable. I think there's not that much different. I don't know. I don't know enough, but it feels like there's this constant competitive tension, which is wonderful. Yes. Agreed. Lomax, what would you pick up on? What's your take for the next two? I've got two that I'm kind of happy to like pin my coloured remords on. And then I had about two or three that I thought about that actually I don't really believe.

50:11So the ones that I'm happy to like pin my colors to the mast on, which I know, Dan, you firmly do not believe, is that 2028 smart glasses are going to start to become a real, real thing. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm going to stick my neck out. They will start to become the form factor of the future. There will be, I don't know.

50:33Lomax Ward:But hang on a little, Matt, let's contextualize that. Where? For general compute, for everyday personal use, contextualize it for us. I think I'm very reluctant to go like into, I don't know how it will play out, but I know that at the moment, none of us here are wearing smart glasses, but I'm pretty sure in two years time, all of us will be, right? On this pod? Yes. As in we will be wearing them recording this podcast? Probably, yeah, because they'll double up as our normal glasses. I guess the two of you don't wear glasses, but yes, okay, either on the pod or just as we offer it. And I think a bunch of our friends will have them.

51:08I think, you know, it's a combination of like the technology is improving, right? And there's still a lot of work going on behind the scenes at Meta to develop this. So, yeah, that's my pretty firm prediction that I'm happy to stick by and, you know, live and die by. The other one is Quantum, and it's a difficult one because Andrew and I have a pretty good horse in the race here. We've got the winning horse in the race. There you go. I'm now going to like, you know, I think quantum's got a winter in it is a problem. And it's not due to like, it's not because I don't believe in the category. I feel like when you look at the valuations of the public companies now with INQ at 25 billion, Quantinium at 20 billion, D-Wave at 10 billion, in the private market, CyQuantum, I think at 10 or 12 billion.

51:57None of these companies obviously have any real proper revenue. Like they still have a lot of major technical milestones to cross. So I do feel that there will be a rotation out of it, which will make, you know, Rigetti is now at 10 billion. And don't forget, we went through a quantum winter where D-Wave got recapped, Rigetti got recapped five, six years ago. I fear that we're going to go through another one again, which I really don't like, that it's probably going to happen in the next 24 months.

52:27Lomax Ward:So what's the prediction for 28 in quantum? Oh, just like, well, the listed stocks are down at the floor, basically. Okay, so we're wintering. 28 is going to be quantum winter. We're in the middle of winter. The things that I thought about that actually I'm not going to pin my, I thought the resilience trade might start to unwind. I think that might happen if Democrats get in, but that won't happen until late 28, beginning of 29, right? So I think that's a separate one. And I was sort of thinking, oh, are all the vertical AI companies going to get crushed by Anthropic? You know, the Lagoras, the Harveys.

52:59I'm not necessarily sure that's the case. The ones backed by good founders that have already got reputations and brands and customers, I think there's still more to play out in that arena. So I'm not going to call it that. Yeah.

53:11Lomax Ward:I think legal tech is going to take a battery. No, I'm not talking about legal tech. I'm talking about like vertical AI companies, what you would call rapper companies or something. Yeah, yeah. Okay. No, I was totally wrong. But yeah, I didn't think the whole rapper side would last that long. And I was absolutely wrong. I think elements will still persist. I think Anthropoc need that. I think if people, if they've built, particularly in regulated markets, if those companies have built, you know, positions of trust and they haven't totally fucked up and overspent and overhired, there's a chance that there's still going to be real businesses come 24 months.

53:43Lomax Ward:I wonder if there'll be like a Dolby stamp, like a powered by on the Anthropic on the vertical side. So they have their own apps. They're obviously building their foundationals and they start doing partnerships with all the verticals. I wonder. Andrew, what would you pick up on? Well, I take the quantum. I agree with Leomax. Slightly different perspective, which is, I think there will be a shakeout in the quantum computing industry. I think there'll be a handful of companies release technology which demonstrates proof they can scale towards utility. And quantum utility, as a reminder, just means actually a quantum computer that can do something useful because all of them are pretty academic at the moment.

54:20And I think many of the startups we've seen will struggle to prove the same. I think they'll come under, a lot of the startups being funded will come under great pressure to demonstrate their technology. You can draw a line from their technology to solve the problems to get to quantum stability. So I think there'll be a bit of a shakeout will start happening. Mentioned earlier, you know, tech is foreign policy. I don't think that's going away. The global economy is sort of spitting into competing technology blocks. And I think in 2028, the question as much will be not just who is the best technology, but whose technology is it?

54:53Like, where is it coming from? You know, Lomax mentioned the power law. And I think, you know, by 28, at least one of the biggest LLM money eaters may be in serious trouble. I think it'd be really interesting to see how these companies are able to continue to fund and power, both from a funding point of view, but from also an electrical power point of view, the demand. So we might see that actually the most valuable commodity might not be, you know, oil or even data. It might be electricity, you know, and every AI strategy for these companies ultimately becomes an energy strategy. And then finally, you know, one of my favorite topics, but I think it is so important.

55:38I think that Europe and specifically the UK will sort of finally really internalize that strategic dependence on the US isn't a strategy. And that will feed into two particularly obvious areas. Well, three really. One, defense. Obviously, we're already seeing that. The second is that we'll recognize, hopefully, that Mistral alone in Europe isn't enough. You know, we need another player. You've always been a big proponent of that, haven't you? Yeah, 100%. And I think also Europe will wake up, thirdly, belatedly, to how important space launch and access to space is. If you look at the number of launches in 2025, the US was, I think it was around 180 orbital launches.

56:23The whole of Europe managed eight. So I think just in terms of mass, that's about like, I think it was like 2 ,500 tons of stuff into orbit. Europe did like 140. In simple terms, that's a launch in the US like every two days. SpaceX is going to soon get down to every day. Europe manages, if it's lucky, every two months. Ariane 6 is quite a successful vehicle, but sort of old school in its approach. And the European Space Agency by 2027 has targeted like 10 launches a year. so it's an improvement but it's still tiny compared with us to capacity and when it also

57:00Lomax Ward:does depend what you're spitting up there right it does depend what you're spitting up there i mean if you look at you know falcon heavy is spitting up starlings and stuff but i mean it's it's serving itself i mean spacex is serving itself so i don't know how you compare i don't know how you compare on the actual payload because spaces have become more and more for everything from defense to indeed, you know, internet access to communications, to sensing, and in future to manufacturing. Lemax mentioned, you know, the proliferation of new bio companies, and that there's a huge growth area in manufacturing for drugs in space.

57:38So as - Do you buy into space data centers, Andrew? I'm not an expert, but I suspect the problems will be solved, that need to be solved. And guess what? Guess who's going to win? it's going to be who can get that stuff up their cheapest.

57:51Lomax Ward:But that doesn't take into account the context of whether they're required in the first place. There is an assumption that this level of compute is required and the cost and the function of space is a smart, efficient way of doing it, which I personally don't buy into just yet. But it depends whether at a macro level you believe that the space economy and access to space is sort of an existential need. And I think it is. You know, the satellites also don't last forever. but like all the satellites that are up there and they need replacing. They, they, they have a half life. They have, they have a, they have a shelf life.

58:24So, you know, the U S is going to be very, very busy putting its own stuff up there. So what's, I mean, I think,

58:30Lomax Ward:I think Elon's just, just, he's just gone to the regulators to put up another 11 ,000, but it, at much larger than the two tons that the existing Starlink boxes are. I think they're like five or eight. So therefore you need Starship to do that. And he hasn't got Starship yet, but this is, this is going to be mega stuff. Mads, I can see you chomping at the bit here. Where did you want to go? No, I think basically all we need for Dan's thing behind the space economy is for Apple to launch a satellite and then all problems are solved. Just give me a folding iPhone and I'll be happy. It's fine. As you guys may have seen in the news that a couple of weeks ago, SpaceX announced that they will no longer be taking, you know, ride share bookings on their transporter program from 20 i did not see that what does that mean in real money it's huge news so if you're if you're like a young start of startup or anyone who wants to put anything into space now probably your only real bet is to is to go by around to go spacex right and yes companies we've invested in and i'm sure you've invested in use that use that process there's a bit of a lead time you've got to book it while out you've got to deliver the hardware six months before etc but they've now basically already fully booked up i think till the end of 2028 and they've now said they're not taking any more bookings going forwards because they want to you know use it for their own their own stuff that creates major problem for startups that need to rely on that going forwards opportunity low max opportunity all right wait wait don't use to me being so negative i was about to say therein lies an opportunity and if you've got your european hat on you've taken andrew's mantler being negative nancy this week but no you've got isar and rfa rocket factory augsburg and a bunch of other well there's like three or four companies um one in spain the chinese have started catching rockets okay it was in a net not in chopsticks but they started catching rockets oh no but i'm talking about yeah but i'm talking about launch right so i'm talking about i said that of course um you know feeds into reusability which feeds into the cost but ultimately if europe can get its gates on um there's an opportunity there the problem is like getting the cost down cost per kilo to launch which spacex has managed to get is going to be very very hard in europe has elon opened up like he did with tesla are all of the all of the patents open i mean is it just a case of we now know how to do it or is he not with with spacex i wonder it's a capability issue also i mean i think most of the even isar's stuff is like so it's one ton to leo right it's not it's not full access to orbit like with spacex and it's not so much i mean obviously there's there's some high-end technology there but it's the entire it's the scale of the industrial machine that enables you to to put a rocket up into space every day and we have we're nowhere near that we're absolutely nowhere near that in europe we're so far behind let's crack down into deal of the week mads what's your deal of the week it's a very exciting company called valerian we've been talking about palantir and sovereign computes and sovereign technology and where is the european variant turns out it's in europe that just had a 50 million dollar series a led by yes by the yankees and ea so even they can see there's a great opportunity there backstory is max buchin and josh vick lachlan have founded the business background there josh was the coo he was a special forces trooper then he went off to have 12 years at palantir where he sold a lot of their technology to customers before going off to launch Valerian here.

1:02:03So they also have Nick Trim, who is ex-Darktrace. There's a bit of a UK cyberbench forming there. And the story is they launched in 2020 as something completely different, kind of a secure messaging system nobody would switch to. But they then gradually move more and more towards the Palantir model. And today they're delivering this technology to customers across four continents. The idea is to have a system that can work with your data, to measure data, provide AI layers and analysis capabilities. But it's cool. It's a Palantir. Yes, but it's sealed on your infrastructure. They hold no data. They hold no keys.

1:02:41You can run open models. It means you can use it for state secrets. You can run it and do as you want. The whole idea is to create something anti-Palantir built by Europeans.

1:02:52Lomax Ward:Governments must be dribbling. I'm sure Burnham will be chomping at the bit. I think NEA and the investors that backed around are dribbling with excitement over how good an investment this is going to be. Cool. Mine is micro AGI. I think I'm saying that right. I was saying to Mads before the call, is it micro-ge? Is it micro-aggy? I'm sure it's micro AGI. $55 million seed round led by Hummingbird, Northstone Local Club, Village People. How funny. Village Global and Red Alpine. I'm sure they've heard that many times. the largest seed round in German history, which is why I wanted to highlight it and give them a big on the microphone.

1:03:28Lomax Ward:Max, you got one? No, I would second Valerian. I think Max Buckingham's a great founder. Second thing I would say, no, I just said it, Attai Beckley being acquired by Edi Lilly is an absolute monster deal. Bada bing, bada boom. Andrew, you got it at the end of the week? Well, actually you stole mine. So I'll second you on Micro AGI. And I think what's interesting about that company is it's software-owned and that's why that's not that 55 million is not even for hardware so that they are helping you know understand the physical world and feeding that that capability back to people building robots and you know we've said for a long time at seven percent that robots really are now not a hardware problem they are a software problem it's a smart problem so that's really interesting yeah good for them what's happening in the week ahead i'm off to see the odyssey obviously the The Nolars beer had some great reviews, Mads.

1:04:18Lomax Ward:But on the more serious side, what's happening on the week ahead? Serious, not serious, who knows. But we will have a new prime minister in the UK again, again, again. Dun, dun, dun. Exactly. Number seven. Lucky number seven. And of course, it'll be interesting to see what will happen with the mansion house, pension agenda, what will be happening with the budget, with taxes, and all the other good stuff. We'll be watching out for Wednesday. So that's Monday. Wednesday next week, Alphabet will release their earnings. It's the first hyperscaler capex print after the verdict week we had this week.

1:04:49And of course, they'll be providing an outlook for what they're going to be investing going forward. That's going to be very interesting. The Farnborough Air Show is on next week, the biggest in the 78-year history of the events. And this is sort of mid-realment, so there'll probably be lots of things coming out of that. SAP will also be announcing earnings. will europe's software bellwether be catching the idea of disease or will it be powering ahead what do you reckon mads what do you reckon if you if you if you're forced i think they'll do all right i think it's a very different story uh tesla will be delivering news on their deliveries

1:05:27Lomax Ward:on wednesday how many how much gamification is that i always wonder what's the discounting what's the old stock one of i wonder if there's a story behind the story i'm going to look into it for next week there you go that's my that's my pleasure again and so week ahead while you guys were studying useful things at university i majored in ancient greek literature especially the odyssey why i've actually read the odyssey twice in ancient greek it took me have you now probably two months you show off you i didn't go to university at all so i definitely wasn't doing that and i did and by the way i got a first in my odyssey paper so we're gonna have to um we're have to like do an odyssey deep dive you know but does that mean you're going to go and see nolan's epic and then be disappointed does that mean because you know you've you know the the the the source of truth i'll go with you lomax if you like it's true it's probably true i'll be disappointed but i know i can't be like taking notes sending nolan some notes for you if it's not if it's not an ancient greek i'm not i'm not going you can you can do one of your you can do a teardown one of those videos youtube teardowns yeah i saw somebody complaining that there were no greeks in it i thought that was just hilarious much is complaining that there are too many um there are what there are too many people who are not of the right color is that right that's the latest debate oh is it oh i thought it was a greek thing but what were they what they weren't weren't they arcade archelians what they weren't greeks then were they but they were called something else weren't they was at that point in time like it wasn't greece wasn't as we know it it was a series of kingdoms right and so yeah but weren't they called like the archelians archelians are canians odysseus is from ithaca an island called ithaca just something else i listen i'll trust you there's no excuse for the wrong skin color either because you i mean these days you can just fix that in post right so yeah but then you get in a whole whole world of different other trouble andrew so uh yeah boys and girls thank you so much for chiming in i really enjoyed that and for those listening and watching we will catch you all next week

1:07:28Upside!