Upside
This week's happenings in startup and investing land. Getting underneath VC, and discussing how to better support the European startup eco-system.
Every week we share what's been on our mind and get under the skin of VC, investing, startups and founder psychology.
From the team behind SuperSeed who invest in technical teams solving difficult business problems.
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Upside
Upside Ep #59 — UK at a Crossroads, AI Surge, Defence Tensions, H1B Shock
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Yes we're European VCs so YES we're talking AI and defence! But there's still more of the pie to eat, so dig in.
02:00 🇬🇧 UK in the doldrums
* Little to no growth (1.5% vs US 3.8%).
* Inflation stubborn at 3.8%.
* 130k jobs lost since last budget.
* Housing, Heathrow, HS2 — stalled megaprojects.
06:30 📉 Structural weaknesses
* UK pensions: only 4.4% in UK equities (vs 50% in past).
* FTSE = $2.8T — smaller than Apple alone.
* R&D spend at 1.7% vs US 3.5%.
10:00 🚀 Reasons for optimism
* Revolut hits 70m users, Canary Wharf HQ, £3bn UK investment.
* UK AI leaders: Wayve, ElevenLabs, Synthesia, Cleo.
* Nvidia building Europe’s biggest GPU cluster (120k Blackwells by 2026).
13:00 🤝 Trump visit & £150bn US deal
* Breakdown: £90bn Blackstone, £22bn Microsoft, £5bn Google, £1.5bn Palantir, £3.9bn Prologis.
* UK pledges $80bn procurement from US tech/defence.
* Historic scale, but execution challenges loom.
18:30 📝 What the UK must do — 5-Point Plan
1. Regulatory bonfire
2. Pension capital unlocked
3. Energy independence
4. Planning revolution
5. Startup Central (“29th Regime”)
24:00 🌍 H1B debacle
* US slaps $100k fee on new H1Bs (was $1.5k).
* Big Tech shrugs, startups squeezed.
* Europe’s opening: 24h visas for £100k+ roles could flip the script.
28:30 🤖 AI Corner
* Nvidia invests $100B into OpenAI — vertical integration play.
* Cohere hits $7B with AMD deal; Modular raises $250M to break CUDA lock-in.
* DeepSeek achieves GPT-4-level performance at 1/20th cost.
* JLR cyberattack halts production for 3+ weeks; systemic risk exposed.
37:00 🛡️ Defence Corner
* Russian drones breach NATO airspace — first NATO shots fired.
* Copenhagen airport shut, Polish & Baltic incursions.
* NATO launches Eastern Sentry, Europe boosts spend to 3.5% GDP.
* Defence unicorns rising: Helsing ($12B), Quantum Systems, Tekever.
45:00 💸 Deals of the Week
* nScale: £1.1B raise at £3B — Europe’s newest AI datacenter unicorn.
* Ōura: $875M raise at $11B valuation.
* Aerospacelab: $110M for satellite constellation.
On today: Dan, Mads, Lomax, Andrew.
