EUVC EUVC Live at GoWest | The Outlook for European Capital Sovereignty feat. Olivier Tonneau, Jeppe Høier, Paolo Pio, Fergus Bell and Prashant Agarwal
In this EUVC Live at GoWest episode, Olivier Tonneau, Founding Partner Quantonation, Jeppe Høier, Co-Host at EUVC Corporate, Paolo Pio, Co-founder and General Partner at Exceptional Ventures, Fergus Bell, Founder and Managing Partner at The Players Fund, and Prashant Agarwal, Chairman and Managing Director at Scandian xplore one defining question:
How does Europe turn frontier innovation into global scale?
Across quantum, corporate capital, longevity, and sport, the same pattern emerges: Europe doesn’t lack talent or research. It lacks the capital and market architecture required to scale strategic industries fast enough to stay independent.
Olivier opens with Europe’s quantum paradox. Europe supplies a meaningful share of deployed quantum computers globally, with strong startup and research clusters across the Nordics, France, Germany, and the UK. The science is world-class — but the financing is breaking. Over the last 12 months, the funding ratio between Europe and the US has shifted from roughly 1:2 to nearly 1:7, accelerating US scale-up, public listings, and acquisition pressure. Europe has 12–24 months to respond — not to avoid failure, but to avoid becoming the lab while others become the market.
Jeppe shifts the lens to corporates. Corporate venture capital represents roughly 25% of global VC volume, yet the average lifespan of a CVC unit is only 3.7 years. His argument is blunt: most corporates launch venture arms believing they are “doing VC,” when they are actually building a strategic instrument without the operating system required to sustain it. Without durable governance — and a clear Build, Buy, Partner model — corporate venture becomes fragile instead of strategic.
Paolo reframes health and longevity as deep tech moving at software speed. Genome sequencing has collapsed from decades to hours. mRNA proved that biology timelines can compress dramatically. With AI now embedded in diagnostics and discovery, health is entering an exponential era — and venture is being pulled with it.
The session closes with a thesis most investors still underestimate. Fergus and Prashant argue sport is no longer entertainment — it is venture infrastructure. Athletes and rights holders are becoming capital allocators and distribution rails. Elite sport has evolved into a real-world deployment environment for deep tech, health tech, AI, and performance systems — where validation happens under pressure and at global scale.
The takeaway across all five perspectives is clear:
Europe invents early.
But scale requires architecture.
Late-stage capital depth.
Liquidity.
Corporate integration.
Coordination.
What’s covered:
00:30 Europe’s scale question — five lenses on one problem
02:00 Quantum’s paradox — Europe leads in science, not in financing
05:00 The 1:7 funding gap — why the next 12–24 months matter
07:00 What Europe can do — capital architecture, procurement, scale funds
11:30 Corporate venture — 25% of global VC, but structurally fragile
13:30 Why CVCs fail — the 3-year vs 6-year test and governance gaps
16:30 Longevity as deep tech — health moving at software speed
21:30 AI in health — diagnostics, discovery, and exponential biology
27:30 Sport as venture infrastructure — athletes and rights holders as rails
34:30 Deep tech in sport — validation, performance systems, adoption under pressure
40:00 Final takeaway — Europe has innovation; it needs scale architecture