A Wake Up Call for Europe's Frontier Tech
This month’s deep dive focuses on the opportunity for frontier tech in Europe, and the geopolitical wake up call for those building (and funding) its future. Unsubscribe any time here.
This Edition At A Glance:
7 Things We Like (2 min read).
Portfolio News: Including a new ML protocol and two Series-A raises (3 min read).
Deepdive: Europe’s Frontier Tech Opportunity (7 min read).
More content from our Frontierspeople!
Live long and prosper,
AndrewJS, AndrewG, Harry, Rebecca, Wayne and Grant.
7 Things We Like
The inaugural Business of Politics podcast with Harry Stebbings hosting the Rt. Hon. Grant Shapps, discussing the future of defense, why government is broken, and how to fix the energy sector. Full disclosure: Grant is a part time Partner and Advisor at 7percent.
SemiAnalysis’ Call for Action for the United States of America and the West to take action in becoming the leader in a robotics-led new labour economy. Not to be confused with Mr Blair…
Concept Ventures’ zero to one report, providing a comprehensive analysis of the pre-seed funding landscape in Europe. It looks at the number of deals and amount of capital invested at pre-seed across Europe's leading and upcoming ecosystems.
Payload Space’s article on the new opportunity for spacetech in Europe. After years of investor malaise and memes about the region’s lack of innovation, why investing in the EU is suddenly back in vogue.
This article by Todd Gagne on why a weight-loss drug, rather than AI, is quietly becoming the biggest economic disruptor since the internet.
Google Cloud’s Future of AI: Perspective for Startups 2025 report, outlining the most critical AI and Cloud AI innovations, trends, opportunities and challenges that startup leaders should consider when building and scaling in 2025.
Social Mobility Ventures’ upcoming Founder & Investor Speed Networking event, connecting ambitious founders from government-funded schools with investors who believe in backing talent from all backgrounds. Even in VC, 71% of UK partners went to private school. None of the full-time team at 7percent did, and neither Founding Partner even made it as far as University, so this last one is something to champion!
Portfolio News
The Hive Mind.
Gensyn unveiled four core open source releases, central to their vision for a networked approach to machine learning compute protocols.
RL Swarm - showing that models training with RL learn faster when they train as a collective swarm than they do on their own.
Verde - ensuring correct execution of ML operations across any device in the world, from data centres to the edge.
SkipPipe - pipeline-parallel training method reducing distributed training time by up to 55%, theoretically scalable to infinite model sizes.
Diverse Expert Ensembles - a model architecture optimized for decentralized networks. They are trained in an embarrassingly parallel fashion and use expert diversity to enhance model performance.
Where’s North From Here?
OSCP featured in IEEE, showcasing how gyroscope-on-a-chip systems will be crucial to enabling reliable self-driving and autonomous navigation - even without satellite signal (e.g. loss of GPS).
Electric For Breakfast, Chemical For Lunch.
Magdrive announced a $10.5 million seed round led by Redalpine and Founders Fund, to start the commercial production of its ‘Rogue’ plasma propulsion system. Rogue can facilitate manoeuvres from rapid space-debris-avoidance to sustained deep-space-exploration. 7percent were the first to commit to Magdrive’s original pre-seed round.
What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
Josef Chen from Kaikaku featured as one of the Financial Times’ top stories, discussing the opportunities - and talent misallocations - facing UK graduates. He says that too many graduates have an overly theoretical education, noting that he’s “seen lots of computer science students who graduate but don’t know how to code properly.”
Quietly Becoming An Aerospace Prime.
Greenjets’ announced the closing of its $7 million seed round, led by Tanglin Ventures and joined by 7percent Ventures, Spacewalk VC and Z21. In just two years Greenjets has grown from a team of eight working out of a trailer, to a 22 person company with a dedicated engineering facility. They will produce hundreds of their next-generation, ultra quiet, electric propulsion units in 2025. Greenjets is set to become a new aerospace prime and is already working on many projects which are not public but demonstrate their expertise beyond just propulsion.
A New Look For General Aviation.
Beyond Aero revealed a refined concept for its light jet, incorporating key engineering advancements and detailing critical refinements of its BYA-1 aircraft. Improvements include a battery-free hydrogen fuel cell system with built-in redundancy, and increasing the power of the fuel cell stack to 2.4 megawatts.
A Voice Of Reason.
Metavoice shipped its Text-To-Speech V1 model for 8Khz telephony - listen here. V1 generates stable speech and conversational prosody on 75% more utterances than V0 and is significantly ahead of Cartesia and FishTTS - two leading market options.
Europe’s Frontier Tech Opportunity
A wake-up call for the future
In a world where geopolitical uncertainty and technological shifts are accelerating at breakneck speeds, Europe stands at a crossroads. For too long, the narrative has been that the US is the undisputed leader in frontier technologies, and Europe, while home to some of the brightest minds and innovative startups, has been playing catch-up.
But now, as the dust settles after the last few years of intense global turbulence, it’s time to rethink that narrative. For European startups, particularly in deeptech, the future is increasingly bright, and the opportunity is undeniable. This isn’t just about catching up with the US - it’s about leveraging Europe’s unique strengths and seizing the opportunity to create world-changing technologies with a strategic, long-term vision.
One of the key shifts we’re witnessing is the surge in funding for European startups, particularly in sectors that are critical to global security and resilience, such as defence-tech. Over the past two years, we’ve seen a 30% increase in venture capital investment into defence and resilience startups in the UK and Europe, even as overall VC funding has dropped by 45%. This isn’t just a trend - it’s a wake-up call. Governments, investors, and entrepreneurs alike are beginning to recognise the importance of backing cutting-edge technologies that will define the next generation of global leaders.
Of course, Europe has its share of challenges. We’re not moving as quickly or as dynamically as some might like, and the political landscape has often hindered our ability to keep pace with global tech hubs. However, the tide is turning. European Union initiatives such as the European Innovation Council’s €10B+ fund are laying the foundation for groundbreaking R&D in deeptech. And as investors, we’re seeing more confidence in European markets, with increasing money flowing into European ETFs - a sign that investors are recognising the untapped potential of the region.
The real opportunity for Europe lies in its incredible talent. From London to Lisbon, Berlin to Barcelona, Europe is home to some of the most technically gifted and visionary entrepreneurs in the world. They are building companies that will lay the groundwork for the next generation of foundational technologies, from AI to quantum computing, from climate solutions to advanced manufacturing. The world’s most pressing challenges will require new ideas, bold innovation, and the kind of deep expertise that Europe has in spades.
But this opportunity comes with a sense of urgency. The rise of these frontier technologies requires not only investment but a strategic, long-term vision. For Europe to truly capitalize on this moment, we must align our policies, our funding, and our entrepreneurial ecosystem in a way that accelerates growth rather than stifling it.
In the UK, for example, we’ve seen a strong startup culture, particularly in London. With its world-class universities, a vibrant ecosystem of repeat founders, and a robust legal and financial infrastructure, London remains one of the best places to build a startup. However, recent shifts in government policies - from immigration to tax reform - threaten to erode this advantage, potentially shrinking the pie for everyone involved.
As VCs, we are not just investors; we are stewards of the future. The biggest returns of the next decade won’t come from the status quo; they will come from the foundational technologies being launched today. Europe has the opportunity to lead the world in shaping this future - but it will require us to think more strategically about where we put our capital and how we support the next generation of entrepreneurs.
At 7percent, we are more excited than ever to back founders who are building the technologies of tomorrow. We are doubling down on our commitment to Europe and the UK, confident that the best entrepreneurs are those who are shaping the frontier tech landscape right now. And while there is much work to be done, we firmly believe that the future of tech is being built in Europe, and it’s a future we’re proud to support.
As part of our ‘Frontier Technology’ investment thesis, 7percent has backed 42 companies in Europe. These include Beyond Aero, BioOrbit, Gensyn, Magic Pony Technology (sold to Twitter), Mind Portal, Plumerai, and Universal Quantum.
More From Our Frontierspeople
Latest editions of the Upside Podcast with Andrew J Scott discussing:
Andrew J Scott presented the keynote address at The Investment Conference ’25: Lead with Impact.
Harry chaired a discussion at the European Space Agency, discussing the future of on-orbit manufacture, along with 7percent portfolio companies Magdrive and Lunasa Space, as well as D-Orbit and Astroscale.
Harry appeared on stage at New Climate Summit, run by London Venture Capital Network, along with investors from Zinc, Eka, Systemiq, and Spin, discussing the ‘death’ of climate tech, and where VCs are putting their money in the space.
Harry was a judge on Seraphim's panel at SpaceComm, pitched by 10 of Europe’s leading spacetech companies.
Onwards and upwards!
You’ve received this email as a known contact of the 7percent team or because you requested them. Click here if you would not like to hear from us in future.