Jan Lozek, co-founder and Managing Director of Future Energy Ventures (FEV) and a former energy-infrastructure leader at RWE and E.ON, sits down with Rohit Yadav in this "AI Meets the Physical World" series episode to walk through where the energy transition actually stands today as an investment thesis. The conversation spans the shift from climate to sovereignty, the divergence between US and European energy markets, the centralized versus distributed debate, the rise of the intelligence layer, and why the durable venture returns are moving from owning assets to running the software on top of them.

FEV is one of Europe's leading energy-tech venture platforms. Founded in 2016 with a from RWE and E.ON, the firm has backed roughly 50 companies across the intelligence layer of the energy transition, including enspired, GridCare, ev.energy, and Thermondo. FEV has been compounding the same intelligence-layer thesis through an entire cycle, well before AI made grid reliability a mainstream concern.

Whether you are a founder, operator, investor, or simply curious about where physical AI and the energy transition intersect, this episode will sharpen how you think about energy as a sovereignty trade, and about where value accrues in a system where the hardware is increasingly commoditized and the intelligence layer is where the returns live.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction: The "AI Meets the Physical World" series

00:47 What Future Energy Ventures is, and the intelligence-layer thesis

03:05 From a climate story to geopolitics to AI

06:15 Energy security and Europe's fossil-fuel dependency

07:57 Europe's self-sufficiency versus US AI-driven demand

09:28 The real difference between US and European energy markets

12:01 Centralized versus distributed, and why you need both

16:03 Where the next venture bets come from: data centers and robotics

17:19 Robotics for infrastructure and industrial decarbonization

19:07 Asset-light versus asset-heavy, and bankable assets

22:34 IPOs, exits, and the first ten-billion-euro grid company

23:30 The efficiency hiding inside the grid

25:24 How underwriting changed: team first, then market

27:53 Climate measurement versus energy sovereignty

30:34 China, manufacturing, and Europe's hardware reality

34:28 Owning assets versus privileged access to them

36:02 The future of utilities in ten years

40:01 Closing: an open invitation to founders

🔑 Key Insights You'll Walk Away With:

➡️ Why the energy transition has become a defensive sovereignty strategy rather than a climate story

➡️ Why the US and Europe face the same grid problem wrapped in two opposite narratives

➡️ Why centralized versus distributed is the wrong debate, and why the value sits in the middle

➡️ Why owning infrastructure is not a venture case, but privileged access to it is

➡️ How the same AI driving energy demand is also the tool that has to organize it

➡️ The two overlooked bets: robotics for energy infrastructure and industrial decarbonization

➡️ What China actually taught Europe about hardware, and how to respond

➡️ Why team composition is still the single biggest reason companies fail

➡️ What utilities look like in ten years, and the one thing they will never be good at

Links:

Jan Lozek: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-lozek/

Future Energy Ventures: https://www.fev.vc/

Rohit Yadav: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rohityadav23/

Newsletter: https://yadavrohit.substack.com/