Top Stories This week:
Has everyone recovered from finding out there’s a greater than 10% chance we’ll all be killed by AI? I say, bring it on. It can’t be much worse than the stupidity we have to live in now.
On that upbeat note, here’s the top five stores Pathfounders has picked out for you this week.
Anthropic whistleblower gave up his equity to leave the company
Read ALL the coverage and hot takes on a story which largely amounts to: “We’re in trouble! But I also just got a hell of a lot of new followers!”
Mistral secures a €3B Series D to push sovereign AI into its next phase
Literally everyone carried this story. I’d much rather you read and listen to our exclusive interview with Mistral’s first-ever VC investor, Paul Murphy. It was so interesting to hear his perspective, and unpack how these guys think. I think you’ll enjoy it.
France’s Arlequin AI raises €28m to build alternative AI architecture for very large data sets
The Paris startup is betting that the next wave of AI will require architectures beyond LLMs, with models designed to analyse complex relationships across large datasets for defence, security and other high-stakes applications. Arlequin’s approach is to use the ‘topological neural network’, an architecture designed to learn from the connections and structures within data rather than primarily predicting sequences of words. We wrote about, and interviewed, the founders about their approach and what it could mean for the direction of AI.
The Exploration Company raised $450M Series C to scale reusable space transport
The round was co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Atomico and the Scaleup Europe Fund, managed by EQT. If Europe has any chance of playing in the space race, it’s going to be with reusable spacecraft and propulsion systems, as I pointed out this week. Isar Aerospace has achieved one successful orbital launch. SpaceX, meanwhile, completed 165 Falcon 9 launches in 2025. It’s high time Europe started doing reusable rockets. You do the math.
iPronics raised €107.6M with NVIDIA backing to scale optical networking for AI data centres
Europe is SO GOOD at optical networking companies, it’s not funny. One to watch.
CloudNC lands $20M to expand AI software for precision manufacturing
London precision machining software company CloudNC uses AI to reduce the time required to create CNC machining strategies and toolpaths. The short version is that European investors are betting on Europe’s re-industrialisation and sovereignty.
Other Notable headlines:
Europe’s unicorn boom is masking an early-stage funding crisis
New analysis of 760 unicorn founders and more than 81,000 funding rounds finds Europe is producing unicorns faster than ever, even as fewer than one in 10 Seed-stage startups progress to Series A.
August European tech funding falls 63% as dealmaking slows
European tech funding slowed sharply in August, with companies raising €3.2 billion across 165 funding deals. Compared with July, when €8.6 billion was invested across 267 rounds, total funding fell by around 63 per cent, while deal volume declined by approximately 38 per cent.
Some Good reads:
And the rest:
What on earth is Pathfounders Network?!
A few months after launching Pathfounders, we’re adding something new.
We will soon launch Pathfounders Network: a curated professional network connecting tech founders, investors and key players across European technology. The benefits will include direct access to key industry players and getting all Pathfounders editorial output first. Plus, we have more announcements coming…
Applications to join are open NOW at Pathfounders.com/network
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