Inside CVC: Paul Farrell on Strategy, Venture and Capital Allocation

Send us Fan MailDr. Paul Farrell is Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at BorgWarner, where corporate strategy, venture, market research, marketing and public relations, advanced engineering and M&A sit under one roof. In this Inside CVC conversation with Philipp Willigmann and Steve Schmith, he explains why he treats venture as one lever of strategy, and why a single front door for startups serves both sides. He walks through how BorgWarner decides whether to buy, build or partner, why partnerships often beat acquisitions in fast-moving markets, and why stopping a small technology project can be harder than closing a big deal. The discussion moves to funding future platforms from the core, what the shift in electrification taught him about investing under uncertainty, and how geopolitics is pushing decision-making closer to local markets. Paul closes with the measures he wants the company judged on five years from now. A direct look at venture as a working tool of corporate strategy, from the executive responsible for both. Learn more about BorgWarner at https://www.borgwarner.com/home.More about the CVC Open Innovation Summit, upcoming gatherings and applying to attend, visit https://cvc-summit.com.Support the showCatch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.cvc-summit.com/podcast.

Send us Fan MailClint O'Neal is Executive Director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission. In this Inside CVC conversation with Philipp Willigmann and Steve Schmith, he walks through the deal flow behind Arkansas's rise from 41st to 28th in CNBC's 2026 Top States for Business ranking, the biggest single-year jump of any state: a $245 million Eaton plant building data center components, a $3 billion steel investment tied to the Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel partnership, and a $2.2 billion Hanwha Defense USA project at the Pine Bluff Arsenal. He explains the state's “get louder” shift in how it markets itself, why Governor Sanders calls herself the education governor, and how four tax cuts and a faster permitting process changed the state's pitch to site selectors. A look at how one state turns natural resources, political continuity across two administrations and an aggressive marketing push into a genuine investment boom. Learn more about the Arkansas Economic Development Commission at https://www.arkansasedc.com.CNBC 2026 Best States for Business: https://www.cnbc.com/americas-top-states-for-business.More about the CVC Open Innovation Summit, upcoming gatherings and applying to attend, visit https://cvc-summit.com.Support the showCatch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.cvc-summit.com/podcast.

Send us Fan MailBen Cohen runs global marketing for the Electronics business at FORVIA HELLA and leads Hella Ventures, its corporate venture arm, a pairing that is still rare in CVC. In this conversation with Steve Schmith and Philipp Willigmann, Cohen explains why the venture arm is funded off the balance sheet instead of run as a fund, how it earns trust inside the company so startups get a real look and not innovation theater, and why partnering often comes before investing. He uses the company's 3D augmented reality head-up display work with Distance Technologies to show how it separates core from emerging technology, and describes how Chinese manufacturing speed shapes make-or-buy decisions on the plant floor. He also explains how AI has become part of a small team. The conversation closes on what he is watching next: advanced sensors and semiconductors. A look at what it takes to get a large manufacturer to say yes to a startup.Support the showCatch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.cvc-summit.com/podcast.

Send us Fan MailRebecca Finlay is CEO of Partnership on AI, the nonprofit that has spent a decade putting technology companies, civil society groups, academics and policymakers around one table. Founded in 2016, six years before ChatGPT, PAI now counts about 150 partners. Rebecca joins Philipp Willigmann and Steve Schmith to explain why the people building AI were already asking for outside voices back then, and how a board that seats major technology companies alongside the ACLU and the Ford Foundation actually works. She breaks down PAI’s new report, The Observability Gap in AI Agents, and what the OpenAI and Hugging Face incident showed about testing. She weighs in on the voluntary accord AI leaders signed at the White House, what credible external review would look like, and why adoption can only move at the speed of trust. We close on PAI’s tenth anniversary and what comes next. A case for building independent oversight into AI before the next incident forces the issue.About The Partnership on AIFounded in 2016, Partnership on AI (PAI) is a global, independent nonprofit that brings together more than 150 partners across sectors to help ensure artificial intelligence advances positive outcomes for people and society. PAI also works closely with governments, policymakers, and multilateral institutions to inform public policy. Together, PAI’s partners shape the research, frameworks, and practical guidance that help move responsible AI from principle to practice. Learn more at https://partnershiponai.org.About the CVC Open Innovation Summit & Global CommunityInside CVC is the podcast of the CVC Open Innovation Summit. The summit brings together corporate board leaders, investors, entrepreneurs, policy makers and innovators across Europe, the Americas and Asia to connect capital innovation and strategy. To learn more about the community and apply for upcoming gatherings, visit cvc-summit.com and follow Inside CVC wherever you listen to your podcasts. Support the showCatch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.cvc-summit.com/podcast.

Send us Fan MailThis is part two of our conversation with Marten Rauschenberg, Managing Director of the Asia Berlin Forum, who leads the organization's annual Summit connecting Berlin's startup ecosystem to Asia's. If you haven't heard part one, start there for his path from paramedic to founder of five companies in Shanghai, and what AsiaBerlin does today. In this half, Marten makes the case that the real risk in AI isn't the technology itself, it's how much of the capital and compute behind it ends up concentrated in a few hands, and argues for open source and shared public infrastructure, like quantum computing access, as a counterweight. The conversation also covers how that concentration squares with the political climate in both Germany and the U.S., and what Marten is looking forward to at this November's AsiaBerlin Summit. A case for curiosity as the sharpest tool any of us has left.Support the showCatch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.cvc-summit.com/podcast.

Send us Fan MailMarten Rauschenberg is Managing Director of the Asia Berlin Forum, the Berlin Senate-backed project connecting the city's startup ecosystem to Asia's, and leads the annual AsiaBerlin Summit each November. Before that, he built and sold five companies in Shanghai, after starting out as a paramedic and a fashion photographer who talked his way into Chinese advertising agencies by shooting cars instead of models. In part one of this two-part conversation, Marten traces that path from paramedic to founder, and explains what AsiaBerlin actually does to connect European and Asian startups, governments, and capital, from talent pipelines to public-private partnerships to getting pilot projects past the "pilot trap" and into real scale. Part two, where the conversation turns to AI, capital concentration, and politics, is out next Monday. A clear look at what it actually takes to build a working bridge between two continents, one partnership at a time.Support the showCatch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.cvc-summit.com/podcast.

Send us Fan MailRupprecht Podszun holds the chair in German and European competition law at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, sits on Germany's Monopolies Commission, and spent two years inside the Bundeskartellamt, the federal competition authority. He joins Philipp and Steve to make the case that two decades of antitrust enforcement never actually curbed Big Tech's power, and that Europe's Digital Markets Act is the regulatory answer to that failure, imperfect but underway. He explains why the real barrier to European innovation is less the law than the mindset behind it, pointing at a legal profession trained to spot risk rather than take it. He argues Europe should leapfrog rather than imitate, backing fundamental research and basic infrastructure over rebuilding the US AI stack, and steering more defense spending into AI and high tech. And he pushes back on the idea that competitiveness means subsidizing national champions, arguing the market, not government protection, should decide who wins. A case for swapping certainty-seeking for experimentation, in the boardroom and in Brussels.Support the showCatch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.cvc-summit.com/podcast.

Send us Fan MailYariv Adan spent 17 years at Google leading Google Assistant, Google Lens, and the commercialization of Cloud AI's conversational and generative AI products before becoming a venture capitalist. He joins Philipp and Steve to argue that the old AI moat, being fast and owning proprietary code, is gone, and that proprietary data is now the only defensibility left. He explains why he looks for founders who have already proven they can hire, fire, raise, and scale, not just build, and why roughly 60 percent of his portfolio are repeat founders. He makes the case for corporate venture capital as a distribution advantage rather than a speed advantage, and pushes back hard on founders who mistake a successful pilot for a signed contract. He also explains why disability-driven AI products can be a real, large market and still be the wrong business for venture capital to fund. A direct read on what actually holds up once the code stops being the advantage.Support the showCatch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.cvc-summit.com/podcast.

Send us Fan MailLeif Lindner is CEO of IFA Management GmbH, the organization behind IFA Berlin, the world's oldest consumer electronics show. After 25 years at Sony and Samsung, Leif took over IFA in 2023 and rebuilt it from the ground up, renaming it from Internationale Funkausstellung to Innovation For All. Leif joins Philipp and Steve to break down IFA Berlin 2026, where 240,000 visitors from 155 countries turned out, 20,000 more than the year before. He explains why this was the first year IFA brought the CVC & Open Innovation Summit onto the show floor, and what that partnership means for the corporates and investors now walking the halls alongside consumers. He makes the case that Chinese manufacturers have compressed the path from idea to market to 18 months, roughly half the time it takes most European companies, and argues Europe's engineering strength still gives it a real path back. He also lays out where IFA sits next to Europe's other major shows: not a competitor to Gamescom or Hannover Messe, but, in his words, the movie next to everyone else's trailer. A look inside the show that wants to be the meeting point for where technology, capital, and policy actually collide.Support the showCatch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.cvc-summit.com/podcast.

Send us Fan MailNaiana Miranda is Principal and Co-Founder of MSH Partners and Chair of the Amazon Bioeconomy Chamber, the first international chamber built to connect capital with entrepreneurs across the Amazon basin. Naiana joins Philipp and Steve to trace her path from a childhood in the Amazon and a family of Brazilian entrepreneurs to a severe bout of mold poisoning that triggered a near-death experience in Qatar, one she says left her channeling Harriet Tubman and starting what she calls a love revolution in a hospital ward. She explains how that experience reshaped her relationship to intuition, why she thinks leaders confuse fear for strategy more often than they admit, and why her Amazon Bioeconomy Chamber treats a standing rainforest as a market to build rather than a cause to defend. She also pushes back on what investors and philanthropists still get wrong about the 25 million people who live in the region. A conversation about what happens when a leadership philosophy is built directly from a near-death experience, not around one.Support the showCatch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.cvc-summit.com/podcast.