Europe wants to lead in AI, defence, and infrastructure. The question is whether it can actually execute.
In this episode of Upside, Dan Bowyer (SuperSeed) and Lomax Ward (Outsized Ventures), joined by Andrew J Scott (7percent Ventures), unpack a week where ambition and reality are starting to diverge.
Mistral raises $830M to build sovereign AI infrastructure. Poolside’s $2B round collapses after losing compute access. And UK defence tech founders are leaving—not for lack of ideas, but for lack of contracts.
Across all of this, one pattern emerges:
Europe isn’t short on capability. It’s short on systems that work.
Key topics:
- Why Europe’s capital problem starts earlier than growth
- Mistral’s infrastructure bet and what it signals
- Poolside, CoreWeave, and the fragility of compute access
- The UK defence tech bottleneck: funding vs procurement
- Palantir, trust, and the case for sovereign software
If you’re building in AI, defence, or deep tech, this is where the constraints actually are.
Timestamps
00:00 Intro and the week’s themes
03:00 News roundup: space, IPOs and market signals
08:00 Mistral’s $830M raise and sovereign AI infrastructure
15:00 Poolside, CoreWeave and compute dependency risk
23:00 Palantir, the NHS and the trust gap
31:00 UK defence tech and founder flight
40:00 Procurement vs capital: where companies stall
42:00 Predictions: local AI vs hyperscalers
50:00 Deals of the week
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