E670 | This Week in European Tech with Dan, Mads & Lomax

Welcome back to another episode of Upside at the EUVC Podcast, where ⁠Dan Bowyer⁠,⁠ Mads Jensen⁠ of ⁠SuperSeed⁠ and ⁠Lomax Ward⁠ of ⁠Outsized Ventures⁠⁠⁠ gather for a holiday-home special to cut through the noise around Europe’s tech, geopolitics and AI shifts. What begins as an innocent debate about whether DeepMind is “still a UK company” quickly spirals into a tour of sovereign AI strategy, the SpaceX mega-raise, Europe’s increasingly uncomfortable place between China and the US, defence-spending reality checks and a surprisingly uplifting set of deep-tech deals across the continent.It is classic Upside: the takes are sharp, the geopolitics gets spiky, and the optimism… well, it arrives eventually.What’s covered:04:36 AI-for-Science, robotics and the new “AI scientist” era06:50 A national-curriculum Gemini and the vision of a tutor for every child09:39 The SpaceX 2026 IPO: what investors are actually buying14:00 Starship, orbital compute and the trillion-dollar imagination gap18:07 Why Europe missed the space race once again19:43 Portugal flips the script: “Economy of the Year”22:58 Europe between China’s export tsunami and America’s cold shoulder32:07 Defence budgets: the hype, the delay and the reality for startups34:25 AI Corner: bubble fears, Mistral’s comeback, Meta goes closed, China goes full-stackComms Strategy Expert SessionApply or share the opportunity with a founder or investor in your network: https://luma.com/euvc-comms-expert-session