Every week we unpack the real stories behind the headlines affecting European venture.

Hosts: Dan, Lomax and Mads - All European early stage VCs.

02:00 — Why Hormuz matters more than you think.

04:08 — Europe: affected, not influential. Europe keeps ending up front row for crises it cannot shape.

10:38 — The startup angles: energy, drones, sovereignty

13:29 — “Fast fashion” warfare. Ukraine-style low-cost interceptor drones versus million-dollar missiles. Warfare has entered its brutally efficient Zara phase.

17:29 — Anthropic vs the Pentagon. Anthropic says no to some defence use cases, Washington gets angry, OpenAI pounces, and Claude fans turn the whole thing into a consumer loyalty event.

19:54 — Mads: pick a lane. You cannot call AI the new nuclear weapon and then act shocked when governments treat it like strategic infrastructure.

24:30 — Lomax: moral stance, fine. Pentagon contracts, also fine? Anthropic can absolutely posture as the ethical lab. It just looks awkward while cashing defence-adjacent cheques.

27:49 — AI layoffs… or just layoffs with better branding? Dan calls BS on Block’s “AI-driven” cuts: more likely a classic overhiring hangover dressed up in robot costume.

32:30 — The tech is real, the memo is theatre. Mads agrees AI is delivering genuine productivity gains. That does not mean every layoff deck suddenly becomes visionary.

34:19 — $650bn of AI infra: boom or bubble? Answer from the group: yes.

35:57 — Mads: froth on top, substance underneath. Some of the market is ridiculous. But revenue growth at the top labs is so real that “it’s all a bubble” no longer survives contact with reality.

38:26 — Black Swan memo season. Lomax reviews Lux’s warning to founders: preserve runway, know your infra risk, and do not assume the money tap stays on forever.

45:23 — Real advice needs real trade-offs. Mads’ sharpest point: “raise more if it’s easy” is not advice. The real question is whether founders should spend time fundraising or building.

47:05 — Merz drops the diplomatic niceties. Germany’s chancellor says Europeans are not productive enough, boosts defence, and generally sounds like someone who has seen the spreadsheet.

51:20 — Lomax: kill FCAS. His take on the Franco-German-Spanish fighter programme: too slow, too old, too late. Back the future, not the museum.

56:07 — Defence primes vs insurgents. Should Europe protect legacy giants or let new defence players eat their lunch? The answer gets lively.

1:01:25 — Proxima Fusion: Europe swings big. A rare hopeful note: a European fusion startup is trying to build something properly enormous and properly ambitious.

1:02:12 — Stellarators, briefly. Mads explains fusion like a sane person: tokamaks are more proven but unstable; stellarators are harder to build but may work better long term.