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Publications & Research
New Nuclear, Old Reactors
The reactors powering AI were mostly built in the last century. New nuclear is a 2030s energy story with a 2020s capital story, and states, more than start-ups, will decide who builds it. Written by: George Patin | Head of Research, London Venture Capital Network With the AI buildup running full steam ahead, one story we've been hearing about is the nuclear-for-AI lens. Some are calling it New Nuclear. In practice, this is really a story in two parts. By October, US technolog
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New Nuclear, Old Reactors
The reactors powering AI were mostly built in the last century. New nuclear is a 2030s energy story with a 2020s capital story, and states, more than start-ups, will decide who builds it. Written by: George Patin | Head of Research, London Venture Capital Network With the AI buildup running full steam ahead, one story we've been hearing about is the nuclear-for-AI lens. Some are calling it New Nuclear. In practice, this is really a story in two parts. By October, US technolog
2 days ago11 min read
Towards Autonomous Science
AI can now iterate its way through problems with verifiable answers; the much harder task for true autonomous science is figuring out discovery, real-world experiments, and knowing what to look for to begin with. Written by: George Patin | Research Contributor, London Venture Capital Network In February, OpenAI's GPT-5 was given control of Ginkgo Bioworks' robotic laboratory and asked to make a protein more cheaply. Over six rounds it designed and ran 36,000 reaction composit
Sep 2510 min read
The Distribution Gap: Why Europe's Cyber Boom May Not Build European Champions
Europe's Cyber Founders Are Betting on Regulation. The Ones That Win Will Bet on Distribution Instead. Written by: Ilya Vencjuns | Research Contributor, London Venture Capital Network Europe is about to spend a lot more money on cybersecurity. New regulation is bringing more companies into the scope of formal security requirements, while AI is making the threat landscape harder to manage. On paper, that looks like a strong environment for Europe's cybersecurity startups. But
Sep 167 min read
Venture at the Speed of Software
Four years in, how has AI reshaped Venture? Written by: George Patin | Research Contributor, London Venture Capital Network At LVCN, we have often written about where venture is focusing its attention. A parallel question, though, is how VC itself has changed. As with many other industries, AI has begun to reshape venture from the inside out. We track how, and what's next for the AI-driven VC. Global startup investment reached $510 billion in the first half of the year, alrea
Aug 206 min read
Solving for General Robotics
Robotics has come a long way since robot arms and industrial assembly. With $19B flowing into the sector in H1 of 2026 alone, that funding will be going towards two remaining frontiers: spatial intelligence and wide deployment. Written by: George Patin | Research Contributor, London Venture Capital Network New Possibilities, New Constraints For fifty years, robotics was a control problem. Machines did exactly what they were programmed to do, operating in constrained and clear
Jul 164 min read
The New Biology Stack
The convergence of AI, automation, and advanced biology is collapsing the R&D timeline. The science has never moved faster. Now, the trick is getting all this out into the real world. Written by: George Patin | Research Contributor, London Venture Capital Network With biotech, there are two stories: the capital and the science. Writing this from 2026, it looks like the two are beginning to align on a takeoff trajectory. The Big Picture The pandemic was, by all accounts, a boo
Jun 105 min read
The Battlefield Is Now a Beta Test
Defence Tech used to mean decade-long procurement cycles and incumbent contractors. What is now emerging is fundamentally different: startups iterating in active conflict zones, building AI-native platforms, and deploying them within months. We track how that shift happened and what it means for VC at large. Written by: Ilya Vencjuns | Research Contributor, London Venture Capital Network Not long ago, defence was the sector that European VCs simply did not touch. The ethics w
May 285 min read
Next Gen Compute: What's Going to Power the AI Scaleup?
The AI infrastructure race has moved from silicon to energy, from chips to racks, and from the US to everywhere. And now it’s running into a wall. So what’s going to power the next five years of the AI scaleup? Written by: George Patin | Research Contributor, London Venture Capital Network The AI infrastructure buildout has been all over the headlines for over a year now. Endless data centres, Blackwell GPU orders in the tens of thousands, and seemingly never enough compute.
Apr 287 min read
Europe’s Deeptech Renaissance: Will the Trend Hold?
Something is shifting in the European tech landscape. Not a pivot. Not a trend. Something deeper. We went looking for whether it's real, how long it might last, and what could break it. Written by: George Patin | Research Contributor, London Venture Capital Network Over the past three years, the venture capital landscape has changed rather dramatically. Following the pandemic-era boom of 2021, funding across most technology sectors declined by as much as 50-60% as rising int
Mar 25 min read
The NoCap Moment: When AI Started Writing Cheques
NoCap invests in a week. DVC replaced analysts with agents. EQT built Motherbrain. AI native VC is here, and it is already rewriting the industry's job descriptions. Written by: Ilya Vencjuns | Research Contributor, London Venture Capital Network In March 2025, Artem Goldman, the founder of Wonder Family, received the kind of email every early-stage founder dreams about: a 100k dollar investment. The twist was that the cheque came from NoCap, an AI investor, and the decisi
Dec 19, 20254 min read
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