Pathfounders

When we talk about drones, the conversation often jumps straight to warfare, surveillance or consumer gadgets. But one of the most important uses may be less dramatic but far more economically significant: inspecting the critical infrastructure that keeps modern life running. Energy grids, gas pipelines, pylons and remote assets still often rely on helicopters and manual inspection, which is expen...

We’re looking at what could become a major reset coming for Britain’s AI strategy. According to the Financial Times, Andy Burnham, who is tipped to be the next UK Prime Minster, is exploring a shift away from the current policy towards one built around UK AI sovereignty, regional growth and re-skilling, as opposed to the more AI-forward approach we’d become used to under Sir Keir Starmer, who had...

When Habs Kim’s family moved from South Korea to the UK, one of their first encounters with the British state was one of the most feared entities on the British Isles: The planning department. That experience now sits behind Xylo, the UK govtech startup Kim cofounded with former lawyer and operator Dermot O’Riordan, which has now raised £2.8m in pre-seed funding to help local authority planning of...

Seedcamp, one of Europe’s best-known early-stage venture firms, has raised $320 million for its next phase of investing. The firm, an early investor in Revolut, Wise, UiPath, Fluidstack and Synthesia, is also expanding its US presence and placing a bigger bet on startups operating where AI meets science, robotics and the physical world. Seedcamp partner Tom Wilson joined Mike Butcher to discuss wh...

You might have though diversity and impact was out of fashion, but apparently it’s alive and well. And Europe has no shortage of startups claiming to make an “impact”. But what does Impact mean in 2026, which companies are genuinely worth watching? “Next Impact Europe”, is a new platform created by two investors: 4P Capital in Paris, and Impact Shakers, a VC and accelerator. They’ve unveiled an in...

UK startup Cosine has won UK government backing to train Lumen Sovereign, its own frontier AI model, on the Isambard-AI, the UK’s most powerful supercomputer. It will work with partners such as BT, Lloyds Banking, HSBC, BAE Systems, Thales and other major British companies and institutions, to build a frontier AI model designed to operate without dependence on foreign technology or infrastructure....

New UK startup Apoha has emerged from stealth with $36 million to build what it calls “Liquid State Intelligence” — a data layer for measuring how molecules, materials and formulations behave in the real world. The round was led by Singular, with participation from Draper Associates, Redalpine, Seedcamp, Wilbe, Nucleus and grant funding from Innovate UK. Founded in 2021 by Shamit Shrivastava and A...

Energy-intensive industries like cement, glass, and steel-making are facing an energy crisis. But the software that controls their plants is ancient. AI startup Gigaton plans to catapult these laggard industries into the future, by building fully autonomous plants. CEO and co-founder Josh Vernon told Pathfounders' Editor Mike Butcher how they plan to do it.

Transition Ventures' second fund has closed at over $150M, bringing AUM to $300M. David Helgason, founding CEO of Unity Software (NYSE: U), spent two decades giving developers the tools to build virtual worlds. Now, with Transition, he's backing the founders building the physical one. He spoke to Pathfounders Editor Mike Butcher about its pivot towards rarified areas such as photonics and...

Europe’s healthcare systems are still focused on sickness, not prevention, even as its population become more interested in the latter. That’s the bet of Lucis, the Paris-based preventive health startup that has just raised a $20 million Series A round led by Singular Ventures. Its playbook includes biomarker testing, longitudinal data and an AI health companion. In this interview with Pathfounder...

Electronics manufacturing has failed to keep up with the speed of hardware design. Now, CircuitHub allows engineers to upload circuit board designs, get an instant quote and have finished printed circuit boards delivered in days. It means a huge acceleration for EVs, drones, or even defence systems. CEO and founder Andrew Seddon spoke to Pathfounders’ Mike Butcher about their recent $28 million VC...

Mistral’s acquisition of Austrian startup Emmi AI marks a shift in Europe’s AI story, away from chatbots and into the industrial systems that underpin advanced manufacturing. Emmi builds AI models that can make engineering simulations run in seconds rather than days. Guillaume Decugis, General Partner of Serena Data Ventures, an early investor, told Pathfounders the deal was driven by commercial t...

Mouro Capital has hit a $400 million first close for its third fund, backed by Banco Santander, taking total commitments to more than $1 billion. In this episode, Manuel Silva Martínez, General Partner at Mouro Capital, joins Pathfounders to unpack why the firm is moving beyond the old “fintech” label and investing at the broader intersection of financial services, AI, regulation and infrastructur...

Pathfounders Live: With Richa Kaul , Founder & CEO of Complyance, in conversation with Pathfounders Editor Mike Butcher , followed by a live audience Q&A.  Subjects covered during the interview and Q&A: * Why compliance is suddenly becoming a boardroom issue * How AI is changing governance, risk and compliance * The hidden danger of employees using “Shadow AI” via their personal accoun...

AI coding agents are making software faster to build, but it’s creating a headache for product managers, who are now the bottleneck. In this episode, Pathfounders’ Mike Butcher speaks to Emma Burrows, former Stripe UK CTO and founder of Rezonant, about why the next crisis in AI-driven software development may be the messy handoff between product managers, engineers and, now, Agentic engineers. Rez...

Sigma Squared has brought together over 1,100 young founders across local chapters spread around the world, and its members have collectively raised more than $2.5 billion in venture capital, but the organisation is not simply a talent network or investor pipeline. President Julia Zhou joined Mike Butcher on the Pathfounders Podcast to peel back the curtain on this fascinating network.

Competition Economist, Cristina Caffarra is chair of the EuroStack Industry Foundation, and a fierce critic of the view that the EU is doing enough to help European startups. Mike Butcher, Pathfounders editor, asked her where’s next for the European tech stack.

Ontora — a startup from Germany which just won YC backing — is building an AI agent designed to interview every employee in a company, surface hidden knowledge, and turn that into process maps, operational insight and context that AI tools can use. Pathfounder’s Mike Butcher spoke to the founders about the tool and their YC / Bay Area experience during today’s AI boom.

Venture capital talks like it is borderless, but the reality is often far messier, especially when the flow is between Europe and the US. In this episode of the Pathfounders Podcast, Editor Mike Butcher speaks to Patrick Ryan, cofounder of Odin, about the firm’s launch of its Delaware vehicle for global investors, and how it plans to take the fight back to AngelList, Carta and Sydecar.

After 16 years, the Hungarian people have ended Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian domination of society and the economy. What will this mean for its tech startup ecosystem? Pathfounders spoke to Ferenc Huszár, Founder of Reasonable (and Professor of Machine Learning, University of Cambridge), and Csongor Biás, Managing Director of Startup Hungary, to get the lowdown.

Europe isn’t short of capital, but what it lacks is coordination. That was the conclusion of Mario Draghi’s report for the EU, which highlighted an €800 billion annual innovation gap, or eight times less invested into technology than the US. So that opportunity for coordination is the motivation behind the new Renaissance Summit: a deliberately small, invitation-only gathering bringing together Eu...

W is a soon-to-launch European social media platform built around a simple but radical premise: no foreign ownership, and full alignment with what they describe as European values on privacy, identity, and data control. It’s led by Anna Zeiter, formerly Chief Privacy Officer and VP for Data & AI at eBay — and it arrives at a moment when trust in platforms like X is fracturing. Mike Butcher, Pa...

We were told AI would make work faster and more productive. But a recent survey of 1,000 executives found corporates employees having to spend too much time checking AI outputs, leading to anxiety, and “AI burnout”. Pathfounders spokes to William Tunstall-Pedoe, founder and CEO of UnlikelyAI, which commissioned the survey, to unpack what might be going on, and where we go next.

So-called ‘corporate reputation’ can account for as much as 30% of its market value in large public companies but the systems used to monitor and protect that are hugely fragmented. Omniscient, is a Paris-based startup that has built an AI-driven platform to asses that value, something the the big consultancies normally charge millions for. Co-founder and CEO Arnaud d'Estienne spoke to Pathfou...

With both the rise of AI and, of course, a potential oil crisis looming as a result of the war in the Middle East, energy is now the defining battleground of this half of the decade. Could power from space be the answer? TerraSpark has just raised over €5 million in pre-seed funding. Pathfounders' Mike Butcher spoke to co-founder and CEO Jasper Deprez about both the sheer logistics, but also t...