Available worldwide via Amazon (Kindle Edition)
US: $5.99
Other regions: Local Amazon pricing
Available here:
https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B0GMXLX56T
ASML sells virtually no chipmaking machines in Europe. The demand exists, but remains fragmented across industries. Europe’s semiconductor challenge may therefore be less about building fabs than about turning its own companies into coordinated anchor customers.
Europe already has the money and public institutions needed to support new factories, energy networks and battery plants. The challenge is getting them to work together so private investors can join promising projects before every risk has disappeared.
Europe’s Scaleup Fund is beginning to do more than finance individual companies. With six investments completed and more than 100 firms in the pipeline, it may be creating the late-stage capital layer Europe has long lacked.
Europe’s sovereignty debate is becoming more concrete. Grids, critical materials, capital, computing and security institutions now sit at the centre. The harder test is whether Europe can turn this emerging machinery into operational capacity at continental scale.
Six investments in, Europe’s Scaleup Europe Fund is moving from institutional design to market execution. The next test is harder: whether its capital can mobilise markets, attract institutional investors and keep strategic European companies anchored as they scale.
Europe’s investment union may already exist in pieces. National promotional banks, the EIB Group and private investors are building shared financing structures. The institutions are connecting faster than the fragmented markets, rules and savings systems beneath them.
Italy’s CDP shows how household savings can become long-term strategic capital. But its scale also exposes Europe’s deeper challenge: connecting powerful national investment institutions without allowing capital, priorities and productive capacity to remain trapped within national borders.
Wonderful is betting that enterprises will not organise around one AI model. As intelligence becomes increasingly selectable, the real moat may shift toward the layer that routes, governs and embeds AI inside the organisation.
Jean-Christophe Laloux will take over the European Investment Fund with a clear challenge: turning public risk-sharing into lasting private investment capacity capable of financing Europe’s technology companies, industrial supply chains and energy transition at scale.
Europe’s deep-tech challenge is no longer only about creating start-ups. It is increasingly about building a financial flywheel in which public capital de-risks early growth, private investors follow, and successful scale-ups generate the returns needed to finance the next generation.
