Upside Podcast With Dan Bowyer & Mads Jensen – SuperSeed

Every week, Upside digs behind the headlines shaping European venture. 

This week Dan, Mads and Lomax get into Burnham's Britain and what a Manchester PM means for tech and capital; how AI is being pulled into a new world order as Washington moves from regulating the frontier to gating it, and possibly owning a slice of it; why June's "AI meltdown" was really a rotation, not a crash; trade turning into economic warfare across the US, EU and China; and the quiet return of the human, the rise of the forward-deployed engineer. Plus deals of the week and what to watch in the days ahead.

Hosts: Dan (SuperSeed), Mads (SuperSeed) and Lomax (Outsized VC).

CHAPTERS

00:43 – Quick-fire news: fusion's "first", Musk's not-a-phone, Iran & Hormuz, Google's brain drain & Gemma 4 

03:14 – It's Burnham's Britain: the Starmer scorecard & what a Manchester PM means for tech, tax and risk 

19:31 – AI & the new world order: the Anthropic gate, model bans and Washington's 5% stake 

33:51 – Markets: rotation, not meltdown and where the next bottleneck (energy) sits 

41:41 – Trade as a weapon: 100% tariff threats, Volkswagen's cuts and the China pickle 

53:21 – Send in the humans: the rise of the forward-deployed engineer 

59:13 – Deals of the week: Quantum Systems & EquiLibre 

1:04:14 – The week ahead: Tesla, SpaceX, Samsung, RAISE Summit, VW board, TSMC 

HIGHLIGHTS

– Why the "seventh PM in ten years" problem is itself a drag on UK investment and the risk-free-society thesis behind flat growth since 2007. 

– Devolution vs. deployment: Burnham wants AI and capital pushed to the regions, but "sovereign British data centres" mean little without models of your own. 

– The US going from regulator, to gatekeeper, to prospective part-owner of the frontier and what that sovereign risk means for anyone building on top. 

– Multiple layers of the AI stack holding 80%+ margins at once, and why every memory super-cycle has ended in oversupply. 

– The forward-deployed engineer as history rhyming: IBM sent engineers in the '70s, and the pendulum's swinging back.

DEALS OF THE WEEK

– Quantum Systems (Munich) — $1.2bn Series D; Ukraine-proven autonomous drones, and a mooted Stark merger to build a European Anduril. 

– EquiLibre (Prague) — Creandum's largest-ever single bet; RL trading agents from the DeepStack poker team.

MENTIONED THIS EPISODE

Realta Fusion · SpaceX · Google (Gemini 3.5 Pro, Gemma 4) · Anthropic (Fable, Mythos, Sonnet 5) · OpenAI · Tesla · Samsung · TSMC · Volkswagen · Alphabet EU fine · Mistral · Quantum Systems · Stark · EquiLibre · Creandum

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

– Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 5 (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/30/anthropic-launches-claude-sonnet-5-as-a-cheaper-way-to-run-agents/ 

– US jobs report (BLS): https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm 

– Trump digital-tax tariff threat (BBC): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn4rd71411ko 

– Additional analysis referenced from the Financial Times (AI world order, markets rotation, trade).

Upside is a weekly podcast looking behind the headlines to see what's going to affect European venture, start-ups and investing. 

Hosted by Dan and Mads from Superseed, and this week our special guest is Neil Shah from the London Stock Exchange. 

A man, his pants, and an ice cube. Dan melts on air. Neil gets called an "artificial Indian" for failing British weather. The London Stock Exchange's tech chief joins to share how the tide is turning. 

02:00 — Mini market update: AI infra gets a kicking

SpaceX limps from 225 to 150, now flogging a $25bn bond and moonlighting as an NVIDIA reseller. Shiller PE knocking on dot-com's door. Nothing to see here.

05:56 — Micron: the canary, the coal mine, the lie detector

Mads explains why a memory maker tells you everything. Revenue up 346%, 85% "sassy" margins, sold out for the year, customers throwing deposits at them. Also: this is why your iPhone got 20% pricier.

10:06 — Can the UK unlock capital? (Spoiler: pensions)

A history lesson. UK pension AUM in equities: 53% in 1997, ~2.8% now. Neil tours Mansion House, PISCES, AIM reform, and 19 train stations of brand recognition. One silver bullet: pensions. Also a confession about a tragic cash ISA.

21:34 — Euro Defence attracts billions

KNDS, Stark, the EIC discovering it's allowed to do defence now the paperwork matches. Mads connects the dots from air-con bans to North Sea oil to virtue-signalling our industry offshore. Buckle up.

30:39 — The AI invoice is due. Who's paying?

Qualcomm crashes the chip party, 300 US data-centre moratoriums, enterprises haggling their bills down. Neil reveals the LSEG runs on Copilot (he's coping) and covets your Granola.

37:16 — Sovereign AI: let a thousand flowers bloom

Italy's Domyn gets anointed Europe's frontier champion. Mads thinks picking winners is "wasted money" and we should copy the Chinese: be a customer, not a VC.

41:47 — Anthropic, Mythos & the Fable blackout

fable5up.com says "no." Refresh: still no. Coming 8 July: government ID and facial scans for your fix. Backup plan: send the next PM to Washington with a letter from the King.

43:13 — Predictions

Dan: SpaceX halves to 120. Neil: please, god, no - it'll ruin his IPO pipeline.

44:01 — Deal of the Week

British Business Bank backs ten first-time UK VCs. Dan talks his own book, shamelessly.

45:07 — Week ahead

Bending Spoons IPOs (AOL and Evernote's retirement home), SpaceX joins the Nasdaq 100, EIC defence equity, and Microsoft threatens to rip Claude Code from its devs by Monday. Pour one out.

Upside is a weekly show that looks behind the headlines affecting European venture.

This week Dan and Mads are joined by Joe Schorge of Isomer Capital — one of the people who literally decides which European VC funds get to exist. England beat Croatia 4:2, a new PM may have appeared overnight, and somehow we tied none of it back to venture. Onwards.

02:25 Economic vibe check — S&P on a record tear (up ~24%), but 75% of economists now whisper "20% drop." The FTSE hits 10,504 and the UK quietly out-grows everyone in Q1. Stagflation: not great, not recession, very British.

05:25 Accenture eats it — Shares down ~16-18% on a "thanks for that" earnings call. Mads unpacks whether AI grows consulting or guts it. Verdict: secular pain for the body-shop, maybe salvation for the reinventors. Not a melting ice cube. Probably.

11:54 Anthropic gets unplugged — The US switches off Fable 5 and Mythos 5 worldwide, three days after launch. Dario warns AI is dangerous; AI gets controlled; Dario is surprised. The boring real lesson: don't single-source your model. One portco's app worked, then broke, in a single week.

20:12 The G7 AI coalition — Amodei and Hassabis pitch a US-led, China-excluding club. China counter-pitches a global one the same day. Mads calls it a market-grab in a national-security costume, and probably self-defeating. Joe wants Europe in the front seat, not talking itself down for once.

26:41 DeepSeek's $7.4bn — Raised at $50bn+ with five-year lockups, zero investor votes, and the state AI fund as the only one allowed near the steering wheel. Joe, ever the governance romantic: superpowers tend to become superproblems. Tell Elon.

32:07 Mistral's €20bn — Nearly double September, for data centres and compute. Joe is delighted there's a European champion; nobody's entirely sure how much cash it takes to win a war. DeepSeek did it on a shoestring, after all.

35:49 Can Europe build a trillion-dollar company? — ASML's basically there (~$720bn). We make more startups than the US, earn 6% higher returns, and watch 30% of our winners emigrate west. Joe: the next European trillion-dollar company already exists. He just wishes he knew which one.

42:34 Deal of the Week — Theker (Barcelona): generalist factory robots, €73m Series A, Europe's largest robotics round. We sold KUKA and ABB; this is the comeback.

43:47 Week Ahead — Micron's HBM print, GPT-5.6 rumours, and the Anthropic restoration watch.

Upside is a weekly show that looks behind the headlines that will affect European venture, start-ups and investing.

On the show this week:

3:03 — SpaceX IPO day: pop, flop or nothing-burger?
7:16 — OpenAI files for IPO — own OpenAI at $1tn or Anthropic at $965bn?
9:50 — Bending Spoons files for Nasdaq: Europe's app-Berkshire
14:01 — ECB's first hike since 2023, and Iran
14:35 — European Quantum Week: inside OQC's £260m round
24:45 — Quantum sensing: navigation without GPS
31:08 — Fable & Mythos: Anthropic's new model and the AI glass ceiling
41:30 — AI safety, ENISA and CADA: the European sovereignty angle
46:17 — Lumen Sovereign: Britain's first sovereign frontier model
54:55 — UK AI Hardware Week: the £1.1bn plan & the Playground Global cheque
1:05:50 — WWDC: Siri reborn with Google Gemini under the hood
1:06:58 — Deal of the week: ICEYE (Finland)
1:07:56 — Deal of the week: Neura Robotics (Germany)
1:10:30 — The week ahead: SpaceX trades, Bending Spoons, AI Act loosening, Accenture

This week's guest Callum Stewart — Investment Principal, Bullhound Capital
Hosts Mads Jensen (SuperSeed) & Andrew Scott (7percent Ventures)

Links & sources

Quantum
OQC Series C: https://oqc.tech/company/newsroom/series-c
BBB £100m into OQC: https://www.british-business-bank.co.uk/news-and-events/news/british-business-bank-commits-ps100m-oxford-quantum-circuits
Quobly €115m Series A: https://www.quobly.io/press-releases/quobly-secures-e115-million-series-a-to-bring-silicon-based-quantum-computers-to-market
IQM upsized PIPE: https://thequantuminsider.com/2026/06/02/iqm-and-real-asset-acquisition-corp-announce-upsized-146-million-pipe-with-new-commitment-from-ilmarinen/

Anthropic — Fable & Mythos
https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-fable-5-mythos-5
https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/09/anthropics-claude-fable-5-is-a-version-of-mythos-the-public-can-access-today/
https://the-decoder.com/anthropic-releases-claude-fable-5-and-mythos-5-with-major-gains-in-coding-and-science/
ENISA / Mythos access: https://thenextweb.com/news/anthropic-mythos-eu-enisa-cybersecurity-access

Lumen Sovereign
https://cosine.sh/blog/building-lumen-sovereign-uk-industry-coalition
https://tech.eu/2026/06/08/cosine-secures-industry-backing-for-britain-s-first-sovereign-frontier-model/

UK AI Hardware Week
Gov £1.1bn plan: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/a-decisive-shift-to-power-british-ai-new-11-billion-plan-to-back-chip-firms-boost-computing-power-and-skills-for-the-ai-revolution
BBB / Playground Global: https://www.british-business-bank.co.uk/news-and-events/events/silicon-valley-deeptech-vc-playground-global-launch-uk-support-british-business-bank
AMD up to £2bn: https://ir.amd.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1288/amd-commits-up-to-2-billion-to-accelerate-ai-innovation-and-research-in-the-united-kingdom

WWDC / Siri
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/06/apple-unveils-next-generation-of-apple-intelligence-siri-ai-and-more/
EU rejects exemption: https://www.techtimes.com/articles/318136/20260610/eu-rejects-apple-siri-ai-exemption-commission-says-dma-never-blocked-launch.htm

Deals of the week
ICEYE €450m: https://tech.eu/2026/06/09/iceye-raises-eur450m-at-eur10b-valuation-as-demand-for-sovereign-space-intelligence-accelerates/
Neura Robotics: https://www.ft.com/content/237f10c2-b2b2-490b-bec1-8864e0a22772

Plus it's EU Sovereignty Week, more on the EU's Palantir Problem & who's now in the the $80bn club?

This week Dan and Mads are joined by Matt Russell, Head of Secondaries at VenCap, the 40-year-old firm with a look-through portfolio of ~500 funds and ~17,000 companies, and seemingly exposure to every name that's ever mattered. 

We get into why secondaries aren't the bargain-bin everyone thinks, why Brussels keeps reaching for the statute book instead of the chequebook, whether the NHS can actually rip out Palantir (spoiler: with what?), and the three biggest IPOs in history queuing up at once. Plus: Florida sues Sam Altman, Europe's two-tier AI future, and a baby that won't sleep.

00:52 — Meet Matt Russell: a secondaries 101, and why the best deals are the ones you pay up for.

04:23 — EU Sovereignty Week — CADA, the four tiers of "sovereign," and the great Azure/Bleu/Delos licensing fudge. Mads's verdict: stop tinkering, complete the single market, unlock the pension capital.

19:00 — Europe's Palantir Problem — MPs want the £330m NHS contract torn up and handed to a British supplier that doesn't exist. Featuring the ghost of the National Programme for IT. 

24:45 — The Enterprise vs the AI Bill — Uber caps staff at £1,500/month, Pizza Hut delivers cold, and nobody can forecast token spend. So how do you measure ROI? (Answer, eventually: cashflow.) Andreessen's "sand into intelligence". 

31:25 — The $80 Billion Club — SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic all crowding the exit. Why buybacks mean the market can absorb it — and why SpaceX needs to 100x revenue by 2030 to justify the price. 

39:30 — America Sues Its Own — Florida takes OpenAI (and Sam Altman, personally) to court as Trump waters down his own AI order. Limitation of liability, load-bearing. 

43:05 — Dan's prediction: a two-tier European AI stack (sovereign Mistral/Aleph Alpha vs "tamed" US models) — plus Matt's "models are airlines, not utilities" framing. 

48:33 — Deal of the Week: Stark (€300m at €2.5bn defence drones the Pope wouldn't approve of) and Dan's pick, Gigaton (née Carbon Re, £26m).

50:18 — The Week Ahead: WWDC and the eternal wait for a real Siri, an ECB rate hike, and Friday's main event — the biggest IPO of all time.

Upside: looking behind the headlines that move European venture. New episode every week.