Innovation and Private Capital x aulium

AI is forcing lawyers to fight AI. As Michael Grupp puts it, "vibe lawyering" has arrived — clients now generate hundred-page legal opinions using ChatGPT, and legal teams need their own AI tools just to defend against the flood. The question is no longer whether law firms adopt AI assistants, but whether they can afford not to. Grupp co-founded Bryter as a no-code automation platform fo...

Rhodium costs €240,000 per kilogram — the price of a small apartment in Berlin — and today's filtration materials are often more expensive than the metals they're designed to recover. That economic paradox has kept breakthrough adsorption technology trapped in academic labs for decades, unable to scale for industrial use. Rhea Machado, co-founder and CEO of Porelio, explains how her team c...

Most buildings designed to current seismic codes are built to save lives — not to remain functional after an earthquake. Alberto Bussini explains why that standard leaves thousands of structures unusable even when they don't collapse, and how active mass dampers installed on rooftops can change that equation. The conversation unpacks the technical and commercial journey of bringing structural...

Josef Brunner built and sold multiple tech companies before retiring—only to discover retirement was a terrible mistake. His solution? Enter the fragmented German food industry through succession-starved family businesses, using roll-up mechanics as a tool to build a vertically integrated food champion. What sounds like an unconventional pivot is actually a calculated play on market structure, agi...

Most entrepreneurs dream of building something from scratch — but what if the smarter path is buying a business that already works, modernizing it, and reaping the returns? Gytenis Galkis explores how search funds and entrepreneurship through acquisition are reshaping the European venture landscape. The conversation unpacks the concept of "founder market fit" — the idea that at pre-seed...

The European energy system currently utilizes only 30% of its distribution grid capacity on most days — a structural inefficiency that software and AI can unlock without laying a single new cable. Jan Lozek explains how intelligence and orchestration technologies are solving grid bottlenecks, accelerating renewable connections, and saving Europe trillions in fossil fuel dependency. This conversati...

Omar Qaise started thinking about connecting cellular devices to satellites years before it became an industry standard — and before bigger players jumped in. Building OQ Technology in Europe meant navigating fragmented regulation, securing patient capital, and proving that 5G could work from low Earth orbit using hardware no larger than a CubeSat. The conversation unpacks the technical and commer...

AI can draft 50 press releases, but it cannot persuade a skeptical journalist, navigate a crisis, or decide which claim a company is prepared to defend publicly. Tilo Bonow argues that artificial intelligence has made judgment—not content production—the premium product in communications. The conversation examines how language models are reshaping reputation and visibility. Earned media now serves...

Florian Heinemann questions whether OpenAI's near-trillion-dollar valuation makes sense when the company would need to rank among the top five global companies by value just to justify a 2–2.5x return for current investors. He argues that LLMs lack the strong network effects that made Google, Amazon, and Meta defensible — and that open-source alternatives now catch up in under a year. The conv...

Diego Braguglia has spent 25 years investing in healthcare, and his most important lesson isn't about science or exits — it's about cash. Through the dot-com crash, the 2008 financial crisis, and multiple market downturns, his firm VI Partners survived by staying diligent, keeping liquidity, and refusing to compromise on the quality of science. In this conversation, Braguglia walks through...

Most companies obsess over acquiring the next customer while dramatically underinvesting in the ones they already have. But what if the best growth isn't found in new logos—it's sitting inside your existing customer base? This conversation explores the often-overlooked economics of retention versus acquisition, the strategic mistakes embedded in long-term contracts, and why billing infrast...

AI has collapsed the vulnerability lifecycle — from discovery to mass exploitation — into a matter of hours, fundamentally disrupting how organizations must think about cybersecurity. What was once a 60-90 day patching window is now obsolete, and the barrier to finding critical vulnerabilities has dropped so low that anyone with access to AI can do it. Marco Riccardi breaks down how geopolitics di...

Companies don't get sold—they get acquired. That distinction, according to James Codling, defines the difference between a forced exit and a strategic one. For UK tech companies navigating the so-called "valley of death" between Series A and Series B, understanding who might acquire you isn't just helpful—it's essential to survival. Codling argues that the UK's venture ec...

Electric trucks are fundamentally superior to diesel—simpler design, zero emissions, lower maintenance, cheaper fuel—yet Europe's transition lags while China hit 50% electric truck sales by the end of 2024. The bottleneck isn't the vehicles; it's the power infrastructure needed to charge commercial fleets at scale. Casper Norden, co-founder of DECADE Energy, explains how his company solves the chi...

Recurring revenue may look stable on paper, but traditional banks either don't understand it or take ten months to lend against it. Float's Jannis Koehn explains why that gap exists—and how revenue-based financing is filling it for European tech companies that are too early for banks but don't want to dilute equity. The conversation unpacks the mechanics of revenue-based lending: term...

Most corporate swag ends up in the bin or as pajamas — over 80% of branded gifts are thrown away or given away within months. Conor McKenna and his co-founder built Go Swag to fix that staggering waste by flipping the merchandising model on its head: premium quality, global logistics, and a tech layer that turns brand chaos into seamless gifting at scale. The conversation traces Go Swag's jour...

AI agents are already managing ad budgets, optimizing campaigns in real time, and making split-second decisions worth thousands of dollars. The question isn't whether AI will transform digital marketing—it's whether humans will remain in the loop at all. Vlad Zhovtenko unpacks the shift from operator-driven advertising to algorithmic and agentic media buying, where platforms like Meta and...

What if the best returns in venture capital come not from picking winners, but from building a portfolio large enough to ensure at least some succeed? Gisle Østereng from StartupLab Ventures argues that even the most skilled and ambitious founders will fail — so success depends on volume, not prediction. Norway's ecosystem faces structural challenges: a small home market of five million people...

Climate tech is no longer a buzzword—and that may be the best thing that's happened to the sector. As geopolitical priorities shift and AI dominates venture headlines, climate founders are being forced to sell on fundamentals, not vibes. Romain Diaz breaks down what this vibe shift means for early-stage climate investing across Europe and Africa. He explains why Satgana's 30-company portfo...

True sovereignty in AI isn't about where your servers sit—it's about building something so good that customers have no choice but to come to you. That's the thesis driving Reson8, a European speech AI company betting that context, not just accuracy, is the missing piece in voice technology. The conversation explores why moving from a healthcare product to a horizontal infrastructure pl...

Luca Bovone raised €90 million, expanded across continents, then realized he'd funded the wrong model. Co-living in residential buildings created operational nightmares—shared kitchens, regulatory constraints, and impossible unit economics at scale. The pivot to flex-living changed everything: commercial real estate instead of residential, full apartments instead of rooms, fewer buildings with...

Stefan Permien warns that Europe risks losing entire industries — not just battery production — because the continent treats batteries as a commodity rather than a strategic enabler. If European companies can't make their own cells, they'll soon find themselves buying complete systems from Asia, ceding control over robotics, automotive, and defense applications in the process. The conversa...

European venture capital has matured from simple investment managers into true fund managers who understand that producing returns means more than waiting ten years for an exit. Chris Wade of Isomer Capital explains why the shift toward active portfolio management—including strategic secondaries and disciplined liquidity events—is reshaping how European VCs operate and how LPs evaluate them. The c...

Quantum computing is no longer a lab curiosity—it's approaching commercial reality, and enterprises unprepared for the shift risk being left behind. Simon Fried from Classiq explains why 2026 is emerging as quantum's inflection point, and what businesses must understand now to build durable advantage in a space most still find impenetrable. The conversation cuts through quantum hype to rev...

The European data center market faces a critical talent shortage: fewer than 40 people on the continent possess the deep operational experience needed to deliver at scale. While speculators chase headlines about AI infrastructure demand, the real bottleneck isn't capital—it's grid capacity, permitting delays, and a four-year build cycle that turns promising projects into multi-year slogs....