Damien Tanner

20 Feb 2026Europe $1B Seed Round, Perplexity Kills Ads, Toyo's OpenClaw for Enterprise

1:38:5920 min

Damien Tanner (Toyo): Agent OS, Pivot & $4.3M Seed

Damien Tanner joins — though one host still can't hear him — to discuss Toyo's $4.3M seed led by Frontline Ventures and its pivot from voice AI to an "operating system for agents": a coding-agent harness that gives agents a secure cloud computer, browser and MCPs. He explains that vibe-coding an internal CRM showed agents don't need human-facing UIs, argues productivity SaaS is devalued in the "SaaS-pocalypse" while critical and niche software survives, and predicts humans will shift to directing and validating agent work. Toyo starts with overwhelmed SME founders — its voice-agent onboarding calls average over eight minutes — and will target enterprises later.

1:38:59

1:58:302 min

Jamie McFarlane (Creator Fund): First Checks into PhDs

Jamie McFarlane opens the Creator Fund segment (one host's audio is still down) with the firm's thesis: European universities attract the world's top talent in AI, robotics, quantum, materials and biotech, so the fund writes first checks to PhDs to turn research into deep-tech companies. Started in 2019 after seeing the American campus model, it has grown from London, Oxford and Cambridge to 30 universities across 10 countries, embedding in the labs where the most interesting work happens.

1:58:30