📬 EWVC March: 💡The New Moat Is Organizational Speed

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Quote of the day: "If I didn’t fill my schedule with things I felt were important, other people would fill my schedule with things they felt were important” - Melinda Gates (Businesswoman).

VC group chats are full of tool recommendations that disappear the moment you need them. The VC Tech Stack Pulse 2026 by AGX, Venture Connections, and European Women in VC maps what VCs actually use - what works, what doesn’t, and what’s just noise. No vendor bias.

We have strong momentum already, with 100+ responses from funds globally. The more responses, the better the benchmark for everyone.

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We have heard a lot around tech circles. A few weeks ago, a shocking line stated that many companies have already been “kicked out of the arena” (see the full post here) - they just do not know it yet. The reason is simple. It captured something the market is only now beginning to understand: in AI, adoption is no longer the story. Organizational speed is (see more here).

Most serious companies now use AI in some form. McKinsey’s latest global survey found that 88% of organizations use AI in at least one business function, up from 78% a year earlier. But only around one-third say they have begun scaling AI across the enterprise. The majority are still somewhere between experimentation and rollout. That gap matters. The market is splitting now between the companies that can actually change how work gets done right now.

There is a lot of AI activity in the market right now. There is much less AI transformation.

That is the first real market divide of 2026. Not between companies that “have AI” and those that do not. Between companies that have embedded AI into their operating model and those still decorating legacy processes with new tooling.

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If enterprise adoption is one side of the story, capital markets are the other. The OECD’s latest figures should be required reading for anyone investing in, building in, or regulating this space. In 2025, AI companies captured 61% of all global venture capital investment value - $258.7bn out of $427.1bn total VC. That is more than double AI’s share in 2022, when it stood at 30%.

The concentration is not only sectoral. It is geographic. The US accounted for roughly 75% of global AI VC deal value in 2025. The EU27 accounted for just 6%. AI is diffusing broadly across organizations. But the economic upside is concentrating very narrowly. For founders, that means the competitive landscape is becoming more brutal, faster. For VCs, it means the AI trade is increasingly a scale-capital trade.

Europe is adopting AI. Eurostat reports that 19.95% of EU enterprises with at least 10 employees used at least one AI technology in 2025, up from 13.48% in 2024. Among large enterprises, adoption reached 55.03%. So this is not a story of European indifference. It is a story of uneven diffusion and weak capture. Europe has users. Europe has talent. Europe has startups. But when it comes to late-stage ownership, compute concentration, and venture-scale value capture, the center of gravity is still overwhelmingly American. The OECD’s 75% US vs. 6% EU27 split makes that brutally clear.

The European Commission is now treating AI capacity as industrial policy. In October 2025 it said the network had expanded to 19 AI Factories across 16 Member States, with more than €500m in joint investment in that third wave alone. Total commitments to the AI Factories and Antennas initiative now exceed €2.6bn.

Earlier, in February 2025, the Commission launched InvestAI, an initiative designed to mobilise €200bn for AI investment, including a €20bn European fund for AI gigafactories. There are still many changes to happen across industries.

Europe is no longer just talking about AI regulation. It is now explicitly talking about compute, capacity and industrial build-out. That matters because the next phase of the AI market is not purely a software race. It is increasingly a race across:

The labor story is also getting sharper. PwC’s 2025 AI Jobs Barometer found that skills demanded in the most AI-exposed occupations are changing 66% faster than in the least exposed ones. Meanwhile, the World Economic Forum estimates that by 2030, labor-market churn will affect 22% of today’s jobs, with 170 million new roles created and 92 million displaced, for a net increase of 78 million jobs.

Taken together, the message is straightforward: the economic question is no longer whether AI will change work. It is whether firms and countries can adapt quickly enough to where work is moving. That is why reskilling should no longer be framed as a soft workforce initiative. As the usage of model capabilities are barely scratching the surface, reskilling for the future is a strategic priority to navigate labor market imapcts:

Sarah Friar is an Irish-American business executive and operator who is currently CFO of OpenAI. Before joining OpenAI in 2024, she served as CEO of Nextdoor and earlier as CFO of Square (now Block), building a reputation as one of the most prominent finance and operating leaders in tech.

Over the course of her career, Friar has also held roles at Salesforce, Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, and today sits on boards including Walmart and Consensys. OpenAI described her as its first CFO when announcing her hire, underscoring the scale and strategic importance of the role as the company entered a new phase of growth.

👉 Find more about her here!

A new name in climate venture: VitaminºC has announced the first close of its €18M debut fund, backing pre-seed and seed climate tech startups across Europe and the US.

Based in Zurich and San Francisco, and founded by Nathalie Moral and Sophie Lamparter, the firm is positioning itself as a transatlantic bridge for climate founders - combining European impact investing depth with US scaling expertise. At a time when climate funding has slowed and many generalist funds have stepped back, VitaminºC is making the opposite bet: that this reset is exactly when specialist capital matters most.

Michelle has raised $50 million for her new venture fund. As she puts it: “There are a lot of ways to make money. I want to make money on people actually doing important things rather than AI slop”. Volz says she ultimately hopes to expand Pax Ventures beyond a one-person partnership. But for now she’s investing solo, and on ‘Industrial-Scale Markets’.

Read more here!

Carbon13’s first ever European Venture Accelerator is a year-long programme with €150-250k funding opportunity. It is designed to equip European climate tech ventures with the knowledge, network and investment needed to scale.

👉 Read more here.

A big milestone for one of our members’ portfolios: Climentum Capital has announced its first exit.

Its portfolio company Kärnfull Next, a developer of small modular reactor (SMR) nuclear projects, has been acquired - an important signal not just for the nuclear ecosystem, but for the broader climate and deeptech venture market. At a time when many LPs are asking harder questions on liquidity and distributions, this is exactly the kind of outcome that helps prove that exits are possible and DPI is real.

👉 Read more here.

IA 50 has served as one of the most respected global guides to impact investing fund managers, spotlighting those deploying capital to generate measurable environmental and social impact alongside strong financial returns. Congratulations WakeUp Capital!

Industry: AI / Industrial Tech | Location: 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | Funding: €34M

London-based FYLD, co-founded by Shelley Copsey, has raised €34 million to expand its AI-driven field operations platform. The round was led by Energy Impact Partners LP. FYLD helps frontline and field-based teams improve safety, productivity, and decision-making by using AI to streamline operational workflows in real time.

👉 Read more here.

Excited to be part of the first edition of 50 Diverse Led Impact Startups to Watch in Europe, an initiative by Impact Shakers and 4P CAPITAL spotlighting early stage startups led by underrepresented founders building real solutions to complex challenges.

👉 If you know a diverse-led impact startup in Europe that should be on the radar, nominations are open now -> link 💙

👉 Scaling 🇫🇮 Finland’s Potential, Interview with Samuel Wendelin, Tesi

👉 Navigating LP-GP Dynamic, Interview with Lisa Edgar

👉 Investing in Sovereignty, Interview with Erin Hallock, NATO Innovation Fund

👉 Read more here.

Volution Partner & Chief of Staff Nina Foote has been recognised as a Senior Leader in the Innovate Finance Women in FinTech Powerlist 2025. Nina plays a central role in 🇬🇧 Volution’s leadership, helping drive the firm’s strategy, operations and growth. She also champions ESG and actively supports the wider FinTech ecosystem through founder programmes and industry engagement.

👉 Read more here.

👉 Read more here!

Peter Walker’s latest remarks on venture dynamics put language around something many managers have felt for a while: “venture capital” no longer behaves like a single asset class. On one end, you have megafunds operating with a scale, risk profile and capital deployment logic that barely resembles traditional venture. On the other, you have emerging managers trying to build differentiated strategies in a market increasingly distorted by concentration.

👉 Read more here!

Amilis has been named Global AI Innovator of the Year at the Venture Café Global Pitch2Tokyo finals, a global competition bringing together leading startups from 18 cities across the US, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Following regional selection rounds involving hundreds of companies, a small group of founders were invited to pitch in Tokyo across sectors including healthcare, climate and deep technology. Amilis was selected as the top company globally.

👉 Read more here.

Sixteen brilliant participants came together for our VC Fund Manager Academy cohort this month, compressing the full 10–15 year journey of running a venture fund into just three days. A huge congrats to this group, it was an intense journey! 👏👏👏

Agnieszka Grabowska, PhD · Alejo Lauria · Allegra Kowalewski-Ferreira · Andrea Waldhart · Annalisa Andaloro · Diana Tsinis · Hampus Björklin · Iryna Krepchuk · Jodi Bartin · Magdalena Dybal · Manuel Yoon · Marta Mrozowicz · Nicola Stanislawska · Pricillia Sinambela · Sara Kangaspeska · Weili Wang

👉 Powered by Venture Connections · European Women in VC

Wanna join the next cohort? Reach out to Kasia

Our 🇬🇧 UK Venture Partner Florence joined the Social Market Foundation for an important conversation about the growing Gen X pension gap. It's a topic we've been pushing forward since H2 2025, we need pension systems that protect beneficiaries well while also allocating capital intelligently into productive parts of the economy.

👉 Join the discussion here.

Female angel investing is growing fast, and so is the community around it. From tax-efficient structures like SEIS to syndication networks and impact-led theses, the roundtable hosted by Thousand Faces hosted by Anna Colombatti, CAIA and Dr Laura Cantora was full of practical, honest insights.

The more women who write angel cheques, the stronger the ecosystem becomes.

👉 Join the discussion here.

We co-organised a networking coffee during 4YFN alongside WA4STEAM and WeInvest LatAm, bringing together investors and ecosystem builders from across Europe. 👉 Join the discussion here.

We had a fantastic time at the Grow London International Women’s Day event yesterday, an inspiring room full of women thinking seriously about how we support each other to grow. The message was clear: women need to move from being AI consumers to AI builders, and the moment to start experimenting is now.

👉 Join the discussion here.

At the invitation of the Governor Gediminas Šimkus of the central bank of 🇱🇹 Lithuania, Kinga Stanislawska joined leaders: Vladas Algirdas Bumelis, Director General of Northway Biotech, Vida Staskoniene, EMBA, Director of the Investment Development Department of Invest Lithuania, Rolandas Valiūnas, Chair of the Board of the Investors' Forum, and explored what truly keeps investor confidence alive, credible institutions, legal certainty, and national reputation. The session was moderated by David Barwick, journalist covering finance and economics.

A wonderful night at Founders Forum Group, with rich conversation around the UK's Sovereign AI Fund, the deepening European AI landscape, and the early-stage opportunity right now. What stood out most: the growing number of women stepping forward to lead funds. Momentum is real.

Thanks Brent Hoberman and Carolyn Dawson! 👉 Join the discussion here.

Our 🇬🇧 UK Venture Partner Florence Bavanandan was at the Launch Africa Ventures Investor Immersion this week, and welcomed two exceptional European LPs, Gry Loseth and Urte Zahn , alongside three powerful female-led African startups: Sudor Apps , ToumAI and Africa Foresight Group (AFG / Peralta).

The future of venture is cross-continental. 🌍 👉 Join the discussion here.

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