AI Hackathon LIVE in Barcelona with Project Europe and CoreWeave

If you're building a business with AI, having a great product is only the beginning.You also need to understand infrastructure, distribution, capital, hiring, commercial strategy, and how to build the right team around you.In this live episode of Founders & Builders, I sat down with Ben Richardson, VP Strategy at CoreWeave, at the Project Europe Hackathon in Barcelona, surrounded by 80+ young builders hacking through the night.CoreWeave is one of the fastest-scaling companies in AI infrastructure, powering some of the world’s leading AI labs and building what it calls the Essential Cloud for AI.This conversation is really about what founders can learn from that journey. Ben shares why CoreWeave was purpose-built for AI workloads, how the company thinks about scaling internationally, why M&A can be a powerful tool when you’re moving fast, and why technical founders need to surround themselves with people who are strong in finance, commercial strategy, risk, and operations.We also talk about why CoreWeave showed up at Project Europe Hack Barcelona, not just as a sponsor, but to support the next generation of European technical founders with compute, advice, and access.Chapters:00:00 Welcome to the Project Europe Hack Barcelona01:19 Backing Europe’s next generation of AI builders04:01 Inside CoreWeave’s hypergrowth and international strategy05:32 Why AI needed a purpose-built cloud06:48 What founders can learn from CoreWeave’s M&A and scaling playbook