Rob Moffat @robmoff

Ecstatic to tripe down with @taktile_org in their Series C. Just love working with this team. The energy at their company offsite earlier in the year was off the charts

Maik Taro Wehmeyer @MaikTWehmeyer

5 days ago

We raised a $110M Series C to power AI transformation in financial services. Led by Goldman Sachs, with participation from @balderton, @IndexVentures , @dig_ventures, @tigerglobal, @VisionariesVC, and @ycombinator. Great news for banks and insurers. Tough news for fraudsters

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This is a really well written and argued case so it’s worth your time - but I strongly disagree. We live in a world of trade-offs, especially so if you are suggesting you use €100Bns of tax-payers money. So here are your options with what you can do with that capital to build sovereign technology capabilities: 1) Use it to lower the costs of the next wave of innovation for everyone ( cut energy costs, provide compute, cut innovation taxes, lower regulatory barriers etc ) 2) Use it to make many smaller bets to capture the next frontiers of innovation ( next gen chips, fusion, quantum, RSI etc ), lower the cost of capital ( back VC ) and underwrite the Government to take more risks purchasing domestic ( procurement reforms etc ). 3) Make one big bet that you can replicate the current SOTA in frontier models with a single Govt owned lab. It is ambitious and patriotic in a way to believe in 3, that the Government could co-ordinate the talent, resources and capital to do this. But history, and economics, suggest it is overwhelmingly a better idea to back entrepreneurs & researchers by making it easier for them to build bottom-up, not top-down through dictat. Recent American success has been mostly built on strategy 1) with some of 2). I’d argue recent Chinese industrial strategy has been mostly 2) supported by 1) ( but open to that debate! ). No-one has achieved 3) in an era where startups have clearly been a better organising approach for producing productivity surpluses. A fair counter is if you truly believe in the bitter lesson on compute, and that the current dominant technical architectures will be unsurpassable I.e this is the end state of technology before take off. This would be a very bold view indeed - and even then there are only ~ 10 people on the planet that could pull this off - and most are otherwise engaged. Back entrepreneurs. Support the innovators where the market fails. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

Anton Leicht @anton_d_leicht

2 weeks ago

AI sovereignty debates dodge their own conclusion. If you really think frontier AI is critical and the US can't be trusted, there is only one path: build it yourself, whatever it takes. So let's drop the sovereignty theatre and look at how we'd pull off the middle power project.

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Ahead of my discussion @thetimes CEO summit today, I shared some personal opinions on the path to greater AI sovereignty. We need greater resilience in the AI stack, we need to capture more of the economic benefits from AI investment, and we need to have more end-to-end UK based model and infrastructure companies in the UK which the Government buys from. The good news is we’re working on all three layers of sovereignty, with the @UKSovereignAI team leading the way, our first 4 investments, if successful, will accelerate the above mission. But the answer isn’t a single, Goverment-led mega project, as much as I wish it were that simple. Deepmind, Anthropic & OpenAI were built by scientists, entrepreneurs & venture capital not Government directive. And the companies that rival them will be as well. We can achieve all the above by backing entrepreneurs and researchers working at the frontiers, giving them support and tearing down barriers to scale. This is not beyond us, and we are at the starting line. We can be more than a middle power.

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At @balderton we’ve been supporting British & European founders scale globally for 25 years. The market has never been stronger, the opportunity never better. Yes, there are challenges, there’s no lack of things to improve in our regulatory, energy & business environment. But it hasn’t stopped record numbers of frontier tech companies being built here in the last few years. In all the noise, that’s a fact. Tried to share some foundations for optimism with @bloomberg this week:

Bloomberg @business

2 weeks ago

"Overall it's really robust, the challenge is keeping that momentum going in the right direction." James Wise, chair of the UK AI sovereign fund, tells @TomMackenzieTV that Britain is getting better at supporting its startups. bloom.bg/46r3dRt

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your voice belongs in a song. make a persona today.

Interesting. AI will in effect increase both supply and demand for formal methods. You need them more, but you also have tools that make them cheaper. blog.janestreet.com/formal-methods…

As well as incredible examples of entrepreneurship and innovation, it's worth remembering that the US Government was the first customer of both SpaceX and Palantir ( and in Palantir's case, one of the first investors too ). Both have been hugely positive for the US economy and their geopolitical position. There will be many positive announcements this week from my colleagues at DSIT on backing British AI start-ups, so it's worth remembering the size of the prize if we get it right. Government procurement isn't about picking winners, but supporting innovation and providing better public services. But back when SpaceX and Palantir were starting up and getting US Govt support - the UK couldn't have procured from a local start-up ( EU frameworks would have prevented them ) and even if we wanted too, the Govt didn't prioritise working with new technologies - but went with 'safe bets' with legacy companies for institutions like the NHS and Post Office....look where that got us. Thankfully, if belatedly, with the introduction of the BBB, NSSIF & the Procurement Act under the Conservatives, and expansion of the BBB and set-up of SovAI under this Government, I'm much more positive about our ability to start and scale similarly important, international winners going forward.

There are already 19,780 jobs live on the free jobs portal we just launched for start-ups based in the UK & Europe! There's no doubt AI is creating more jobs, but they will be different. In the era of the PC, and the internet, it was the people who jumped in and worked out how to get the best from these new technologies that benefitted the most - the same will be true in the AI era ( of people, as well as countries ). So do check out some of the roles in these mostly AI-first companies, great places to get experience or build an entrepreneurial career.

SaaS (per seat) revenue is better than transactional revenue. Usage based revenue is better than SaaS revenue. But transactional revenue = usage-based revenue. Am I the only VC who sees the contradiction here?

At @balderton we launched #builtineurope to bring more positivity and excitement around everything that great founders are building across Europe. Also to encourage more people to work in startups - see a full directory of startup jobs here: builtineurope.com

Proud to be part of @balderton's #BuiltInEurope campaign, celebrating the best of European tech and the world-class companies that are thriving in Europe, right now. builtineurope.com

For over twenty years, @balderton has backed British & European entrepreneurs to build breakout technology companies. And there has never been a better time to do it. More people than ever are interested in founding companies, in joining start-ups, and in taking on some of the biggest challenges of our time with technology, from energy to health, defence to finance, building from here to win globally. And AI is making it easier than ever to get going. But there's a big gap with this positive movement, and the general coverage of the tech sector here, one which often suggests you can't or shouldn't try to start a business. Today we've launched a campaign to help change that. It is a public celebration of some of the founders driving the frontiers of tech, and a digital portal providing support to potential founders and access to 1,000s of open roles at start-ups. Yes there are challenges, and there always will be. But that didn't stop some of the founders that went before. We hope this helps nudge the conversation, and inspires a few more people to take the risk.

AI data centre electricity demand rose by 17% in 2025; nearly six times faster than overall global electricity growth. By 2030, AI-specific demand is projected to triple. There is no AI race without an energy race underneath it. China understands this clearly. They are building solar, wind, nuclear, coal, gas. All of it, simultaneously, at enormous scale. Meanwhile, much of the West still treats energy infrastructure as something to ration, delay, or optimise around scarcity. The countries that win in the AI era are the ones with the most power.

Why would any founder stay in the UK if you did this? Absolutely everything would push you to start, scale and list your business in the US. I don’t think Wes realises the biggest competitive advantage the UK has over California today is capital gains tax. Do this and say goodbye to any hope of reversing the stagnation.

Steven Swinford @Steven_Swinford

a month ago

Wes Streeting has this morning set out his tax plans - specifically bringing capital gains tax into line with income tax He says that the current system is unfair because it penalises work Higher or additional rate taxpayers will pay 24% on gains in the current financial year.

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The UK is already seeing the benefits of being an AI hub. But we’re not doing a good enough job of explaining the opportunity ahead. I wrote for @thetimes today on being an ambitious nation again - and the need to fight the AI doomers. We had similar opportunities in the internet era, but failed to seize on them. We can’t miss again.

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Great to see @OpenAI double-down again on the UK with the acquisition of Tomoro to build out their $4B deployment company. Founded in Edinburgh & London with a presence in Manchester and Glasgow, worth checking out their open positions as I imagine they're about to expand alot!

Excited for meetdavis.com to go live with Gaudi-1 their first proprietary model for automated architectural generation. Very happy to invest with @balderton and @HeartcoreCap linkedin.com/posts/mehdi-ra…

17 investments in 3 months. All Fund III 💙 @e2mindset Conviction built over the past year All under @arinozkula's watch Launched our €100M Fund III in January. Most funds take a breath after raising. We didn’t. Some call it spray and pray. Not sure which part is doing the work. 9 bridging to SF (all AI) 5 Turkish mobile gaming 3 outside thesis because great founders don’t always fit neatly into one Looks chaotic from the outside. Feels obvious from here. Opening our SF office soon (South Park) Punching above our weight. Trying to become the default bridge between this region and SF.

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I really hate this post, mostly because I think it’s true and a sad commentary on the current state of market. Herd behavior overwhelmingly driving decisions.

Daniel Dhawan @daniel_dhawan

3 months ago

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