26 Nov 2025etn. Episode 12
Tom Wehmeier (Atomico): State of European Tech 2025
Tom Wehmeier of Atomico explains he started the State of European Tech report 11 years ago to counter stereotypes about European tech with trusted data, drawing on partners like Dealroom and PitchBook, a large annual survey, and interviews with figures like Anton Osika, ElevenLabs' Matti and Ursula von der Leyen. He describes the shift from 2024 'doomerism' to record company creation and founder ambition, and lays out the report's four missions: fix the friction, empower talent, fund the future, and champion risk. He frames EU Inc. and the 28th Regime as a test of whether policymakers choose one European regulation over 27 fragmented implementations, cites procurement stats (9% innovative spend in Europe vs 20% in the US, 25% in South Korea), and traces the Skype-to-Spotify-to-Wise flywheel. His advice to entrepreneurs: don't limit your ambition.
Stealth-mode banter & the 'macro function of ETN' tweet
The hosts debrief after the interview, discussing how many new companies are being started in Europe and their own experience announcing they were 'going in stealth.' Luke reads out his tweet arguing that ETN's macro function is to amplify 'perceived opportunity density,' creating a mimetic loop of more stories, more belief and more winners — a point he notes matches what Tom had just described; Cedric from Bolt liked the tweet. They also reference Luke's pre-show banana photo post.
Anthropic's Claude Café pop-up in London
The hosts discuss Anthropic's Claude Café pop-up in London, praising the branding, interior, 'Santa Claude' carol singers and the huge queues, while Luke remains unconvinced by the free caps. They react to Dan Bilson's viral tweet about the pop-up and Jason Rodriguez's take that launching in New York and London before San Francisco was a deliberate, culture-forward brand move. They joke about wanting more events like it, floating the idea of the band Beside doing a café set.
Lovable hits $200M ARR by staying in Europe
The hosts read coverage of Lovable reaching $200M ARR, with Anton Osika crediting the decision not to move to Silicon Valley and saying there's plenty of talent available if you have a strong mission — Lovable brought people from companies like Notion and Gusto to work in person in Stockholm. They connect this to the talent-density and opportunity-density points from the Tom Wehmeier interview, and debate what Lovable's customer split looks like while admitting they pay for accounts they barely use. They also retell the story of early angel Sid — former Shopify VP of Engineering — who only got excited when Anton clarified that the growth chart he'd been shown was paid users.
Fuse Energy nears new funding at a $5B valuation
The hosts cover the news that Fuse Energy, the UK startup founded by former Revolut executives including employee number three Alan Chang, is in advanced talks to raise around $100M at roughly a $5B valuation — a five-fold jump from earlier in the year — with Lowercarbon Capital set to lead and Balderton also participating. They note the company, which provides cheap power and develops its own renewables, was only founded in 2022. They read Alan Chang's quote-tweet of John Fingleton saying Fuse would love to build nuclear but costly regulations are stopping it, tying it back to Tom Wehmeier's earlier point about founders being restricted.
Sid Jayakumar (Finster AI): from DeepMind to AI agents for banks
Finster AI founder and CEO Sid Jayakumar recounts his seven years at DeepMind — joining as its first undergraduate intern after seeing the 2015 Atari demo, working on games, AlphaGo-era research and later making LLMs more efficient — and credits Demis Hassabis with keeping DeepMind, and thus the UK AI ecosystem, in London. He argues Google's consumer play is search rather than the Gemini app, while the enterprise side is vertically integrated through the Gemini API, GCP and TPUs, and says Gemini 3 shows how fast narratives can flip — the same problem he sees with the UK tech scene. He explains why Finster chose the application layer for finance: low margin for error, real-time data, and holding the product to banking standards while moving quickly, which means thorough evaluation before shipping. He also covers six-month-to-two-year enterprise sales cycles, resisting over-customizing for one big client, and his view that AI-driven personalization and proactivity — not prompt engineering or implementation consultants — is where things are heading.
Mimic Robotics' Stephan Daniel Graver on dexterous robot hands
Mimic Robotics co-founder and CPO Stephan Daniel Graver explains the company builds frontier physical AI for dexterous robotic hands, targeting intricate manual factory tasks in manufacturing, assembly and logistics that traditional automation can't handle, and says the seed round came together quickly amid strong VC appetite for robotics. He walks through their data strategy: rather than teleoperation, they capture fine-tuning data directly from factory workers doing their existing jobs, matching the information available to the data collector with what the AI model receives. He explains why they deliberately don't build humanoids for industry — flat factory floors don't need legs, and certification and deployment are simpler — and why staying full-stack and close to end customers is key to building a data moat on specific assembly tasks.
Figure robot videos & the UK AI 'vibe shift' dashboard
In the closing minutes the hosts react to Figure's robot folding-clothes video and joke that Brett Adcock's posts must be ghostwritten. They then discuss a viral video about scaring MP Narayan, which they can't play with sound, before reading a tweet arguing that while politicians talk the UK down, UK AI and tech is moving at 100 miles an hour — pointing to a scrappy real-time dashboard, vibe-shift.uk, being built with its code on GitHub. The segment ends mid-conversation.