The Nvidia Pact and EU Inc: Is Europe Buying Sovereignty Instead of Building It?

Source: Startup Insider – Original Episode (episode in German)

Two topics that both illustrate how Europe still isn’t quite sure where it’s headed. First: The German government has signed a memorandum of understanding with Nvidia on industrial AI with a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises; Jensen Huang and Friedrich Merz share the stage. Björn Rieckhoff puts the scale into perspective—hundreds of millions of euros in public funds versus over $700 billion in CapEx from the hyperscalers—and shows how Nvidia is establishing a foothold at every stage of the value chain, right down to taking equity stakes in its own customers. Jan Thomas, on the other hand, asks where value creation will even still be taking place in Germany in 20 years, and whether we will build our own infrastructure or simply come to terms with our dependence. Second: EU Inc, the uniform legal form for startups across all 27 member states, is facing implementation hurdles—1,418 amendments, the central registry scrapped, and the timeline pushed back from 2027 to 2028. To start things off, here’s a brief update on the public beta of Nephilia, followed by a discussion of why Europe needs to relearn how to engage in heated debate.

Key themes in this episode

Transcript

This transcript has been edited for readability. The content and statements have not been changed. The original conversation was in German; this is an English translation.

Jan Thomas: Björn, hi, nice to meet you.

Björn Rieckhoff: Hi Jan, nice to meet you too.

Jan Thomas: I just introduced you as the founder of Nephilia. How is Nephilia doing?

Björn Rieckhoff: Great, thank you very much. Yes, exactly—it’s a new role for me, sitting in the founder’s seat. Nephilia is doing quite well. We basically launched the beta during our last podcast recording with you, and it’s gotten off to a great start. We’ve been in public beta since the end of September, and the first founders are already using it for real funding rounds. I really, really like how they’re using it—especially the German founders. Over the past few days and weeks, I’ve been working hard to make the product more robust and to expand the database in specific areas in greater depth. I’m actually very satisfied with the coverage by now. A few things have been added. Especially in the age of AI, the number of investors you map isn’t as meaningful as the depth of the data. That’s why there’s now a lot of information across different layers that can provide added value to founders: We’ve mapped not only the investors, but also the individuals at these funds—including their career paths and experience in specific industries—as well as the funds’ portfolio companies. That way, you don’t just get the marketing fluff on the VCs’ websites about what they invest in—you can see, based on specific deals, how much substance lies behind their individual claims. I really like that. And based on my past experience observing the investor landscape, there’s also a whole host of valuable insights in there that can help founders navigate the fundraising process effectively.

Jan Thomas: But is this still an area where you’re likely doing a fair amount of rework? I can imagine: public beta, lots of feedback—and a few sleepless nights for you.

Björn Rieckhoff: Yeah, sleepless nights—and, of course, a MacBook that never goes into sleep mode, so the agents can keep churning away. In that sense …

Jan Thomas: Don’t you have a Mac Mini farm yet?

Björn Rieckhoff: No, not that. At this stage, I think that would be a bit unnecessary. I’m giving a lot of thought to the conceptual aspects and have noticed that the whole field is becoming much more professional right now. I’ve also revamped my own workflow—figuring out how to incorporate customer feedback more quickly through structured GitHub issues that I then work through. And since the database has grown so much, I’ve now also set up secure backups and things like that. There are a lot of things happening behind the scenes that you don’t really notice from the outside, but which, in a way, help me sleep soundly at night because I don’t have to worry that something will go completely haywire. I’m trying to build a solid foundation right now. I really enjoy it, and I believe the added value ultimately benefits the founders as well.

Jan Thomas: We’ll include the link in the show notes again. I’m really glad we discussed it in such depth last time. We’ll also include the link to the last episode again—for anyone who didn’t get a chance to listen to it and is thinking, “Fundraising sounds exciting; I’m doing that right now or will be soon.” It’s really turned out to be a great tool, I have to say. And I’d say we’ll provide updates on this topic every now and then in the coming episodes.

Björn Rieckhoff: I’d be happy to, yes. Thank you very much.

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Jan Thomas: Sure. Let’s dive right in. We have two major topics, both of which are very important in their own way—I’m just wondering if they’re equally important for the startup scene. But you tell me. Let’s start with the high-profile state visit.

Björn Rieckhoff: Exactly, the big state visit—that’s really what it’s become by now, almost as if a president were being welcomed. The federal government is essentially buying sovereignty from a quasi-monopolist: Nvidia is visiting Germany. My LinkedIn feed this morning—Tuesday, at the time of recording—was just full of photos of Merz and Huang shaking hands and sitting on stage with big grins. That’s topic number one. Topic number two is EU Inc. and the way Europe is currently handling a very, very good initiative—to put it neutrally. We can go into more detail about that later.

Jan Thomas: Exactly, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s stick with Jensen Huang and Friedrich Merz. I watched the talk—or rather, what do you call it? I think they called it a “fireside chat.” What was nice to see right off the bat: Jensen Huang is actually quite likable in his own way. He’s veered a bit too much toward Trump lately, with that phone number and stories like that—he’s on a cozying-up mission—but maybe that’s necessary. And he talked about how far back Nvidia’s success story actually goes and how closely it’s tied to Germany. I hadn’t really realized that. He mentioned ISO, I think, or maybe Audi. He said, for example, that without Audi, they wouldn’t be in the mobility sector at all. I found that really fascinating.

Björn Rieckhoff: That’s actually not an isolated case. Take Musk, for example: He still likes to say that Daimler saved Tesla back then with a 50-million investment. It’s a very dynamic tension, I’d say, between the tech bosses and Germany—a sort of love-hate relationship. Everyone knows that Germany is a very important economic hub, but for the sake of publicity, they never tire of pointing out how far behind Germany is. Of course, there are their own ambitions behind this: they want to wake up this “sleeping champion,” if you will, in order to generate significant revenue in specific sectors. And that’s exactly how I interpret his visit to the Invest in Germany Summit right now.

Jan Thomas: I have to say, though, that I was actually quite pleased. I may not be able to fully assess it yet, but I was pleased—perhaps also for lack of alternatives. If there aren’t any other players with whom you can do something like this, then those players simply have to come to Germany or Europe and drive things forward here. I probably would have liked to see other companies start developing here 20 years ago in the same way that Nvidia has. But they just don’t exist.

Björn Rieckhoff: That’s absolutely right. You’ve essentially got monopolists now. Sure, players are emerging in China who’ve been very savvy from the start: They bought chips from Nvidia as long as it was possible and made sense, while simultaneously building up their own production capacity. AMD is already a significant company globally—don’t get me wrong—but its market share is relatively small. The same goes for the chips that Meta or Amazon develop themselves—their market share is negligible. That’s why Nvidia currently holds a monopoly position, and honestly, not just when it comes to the chips themselves, but—we’ll get to that in a moment—across the entire value chain. Let’s take a step back and look at what actually happened. The German government signed a memorandum of understanding with Nvidia—the “Declaration of Intent on Physical AI and Industrial AI,” with a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises. That, of course, is Germany’s great strength: The hyperscalers are based in the U.S., but here in Europe—and especially in Germany—you’ll find this massive bloc of small and medium-sized enterprises that has now become very active when it comes to the use and application of AI. Always, it must be said, with the awareness that there’s a very strong demand for independent, sovereign models to ensure that existing expertise doesn’t drain away. That notorious fear we Germans have—that our engineering expertise could be—and is—copied somewhere. And so, with the appropriate investments, they now want to ensure that progress is made here in Germany as well. I’d like to put this into perspective for the neutral listener. Officially, there are no figures on how much money the federal government plans to allocate to the project. There’s talk of hundreds of millions of euros for computing and model training—at least according to Reuters. Of course, that always sounds very good. We’ve discussed this before in past episodes: The combined CapEx of the major hyperscalers in 2026 is estimated at over 700 billion dollars.

Jan Thomas: That’s just on a whole other level.

Björn Rieckhoff: On the one hand, there’s the private sector—the hyperscalers’ Capex—and on the other, public money—hundreds of millions of euros. From my perspective, that’s a bit sobering. But I also believe that Mr. Merz has now joined the ranks of heads of state who surround themselves with highly successful tech entrepreneurs. Which is the right thing to do and a good way to kickstart this momentum. I don’t mean to interpret this as criticism; I think it’s good that he’s getting involved. It’s just that, quite honestly, it all feels a bit insufficient to me.

Jan Thomas: I find that so hard to say. Of course, it’s way too little right now—I agree with you there. It’s not exactly a “wake-up call” moment.

Björn Rieckhoff: At the same time: Constant dripping wears away the stone. If you want to change a mindset, it doesn’t happen overnight.

Jan Thomas: And by that, I don’t just mean the government, but the entire SME sector. Jensen Huang, for example, was asked what the factories of the future will look like—we’re happy to link to the fireside chat. Then he starts explaining that the factory of the future is actually a digital twin where people will work. That sounds totally cool and wild. But when I think of my stereotypical images of certain small and medium-sized business owners, I’m not sure if they’d understand what he said.

Björn Rieckhoff: I’m not sure about that either—I agree with you there. In that sense: Constant dripping wears away the stone. And you can see it in the way he argues—depending on which audience he’s speaking to at the moment. On the one hand, he pats small and medium-sized businesses on the back and comes across as a good partner, and then a few days before the Invest Summit, he stands up and says Germany is missing the boat here. Sure, because he wants to shake things up. At the end of the day, it’s a matter of rhetoric. But in principle, it all points in the same direction: not only to further open up the German and European markets, but to penetrate them more deeply and to trigger and capitalize on the existing willingness to act. And we all agree on that: It’s just a matter of time, not of “if.” From his perspective, it’s simply a matter of getting it done as quickly as possible.

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Jan Thomas: Absolutely. But the other reason I hesitated just now is that I still can’t quite figure out where value creation will take place in, say, 20 years. What the world of work will look like—not tomorrow, but really in the next generation. I’m a little worried: We’re setting the course right now for whether we’ll be completely dependent in 20 years and whether anything will even be happening here at all. And whether human workers in factories will even play a role anymore—that, I think, is the biggest question anyway. But no one has the slightest idea right now how we’ll be working in 20 years, how we’ll earn money, what we’ll live on, and on whom we’ll depend. To me, that’s a discussion that really needs to be held in parallel with the question: What are we investing in right now? Don’t we need to build even more startups that compete with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Nvidia? Or should we invest in Nvidia and say, “All right, the battle is lost anyway”? That’s my question. I don’t have an answer either, but that’s why I’m a bit hesitant with my assessment.

Björn Rieckhoff: I think it’s also true that people hesitate in this regard. If there were an answer to that, we probably wouldn’t have certain problems. That’s just the way it is. You say people invest in Nvidia or with Nvidia because the battle is lost anyway—“battle” is, of course, a bit of a sensationalized way of putting it. But this huge task we face—to continue playing a very relevant role geopolitically—and this expectation we place on ourselves to defend that position: I believe there’s also a version of reality in which that’s entirely possible, while you continue to collaborate with U.S. companies, Asian companies, and so on. From my very liberal perspective, that’s probably the necessary foundation.

Jan Thomas: Tell me, in what field? I’d be interested to know, Björn, because I can’t quite place it myself. We won’t be building cars here in 20 years. And there’s also the question of whether that will even be relevant anymore. When I see one of those flying Teslas, I think to myself: how absurd. Sorry.

Björn Rieckhoff: Okay, that’s also the question of how relevant it is. What the future of mobility looks like will still play a role. But I believe this: We in Germany are, of course, very proud of what we’ve achieved. When you think about how we’ve achieved certain things and what we’ve always been very good at, I think it’s this conceptual thinking, this thematic thinking, problem-solving skills, and the like. And I do believe that many of these—I’ll call them, somewhat conservatively—virtues are very important, even when you’re working with AI models. And …

Jan Thomas: But that’s still looking back, isn’t it? What you’re doing right now.

Björn Rieckhoff: That’s right, that’s right. But what I’m trying to say is: You’re dealing with a workforce—in both medium-sized companies and large corporations—that is very much capable of working very productively with the relevant systems. You just have to give them the push they need to learn how to use them. A few months ago, I wasn’t working with these systems as intensively as I am now. And now, if I assess this objectively—as I’m seeing with the example of Nephilia, right? I’m making progress—I’d say that I’m not among the laggards in this market, but rather that I’m thinking very intensively about how to approach these issues conceptually in order to become productive as quickly as possible and generate added value. And this transformation—let’s just take me as an example, from who I was two years ago to who I am now—is something you’ll also see in the average German engineer over the coming years. Then you’ll have a broad segment of the population that can use these models very effectively. And we’re not talking about the consumer ChatGPT that says, “Give me five recipe suggestions based on the ingredients in my fridge,” but rather: How do I solve the specific engineering problem I’m facing? If you’ve unlocked that… That’s why there’s a Jensen in Berlin, after all. He wouldn’t be there if it didn’t matter. And that’s why, I think, we always see this criticism from people like Musk, Trump, and the like: In principle, everyone is interested in Germany doing very well and in us continuing to be this strong partner. Otherwise, we would have ceased to play any role long ago.

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Jan Thomas: Well, they just need competition. It’s important to them that a country still has hope of being in the game and keeps investing all the time. That’s the carrot they dangle in front of you. And that’s a good thing, too. Let me clarify: That might sound like I’m against his visit and against the investments. I actually think it’s great. I’m just wondering what we’ll do with that kind of investment and what kind of next generation of companies or infrastructure will emerge here as a result. That’s really what I’m getting at. If Jensen Huang comes back in a year or three years: Will we then invest in the same company, only 20 times as much? Or will we have the money ready for a different kind of infrastructure here—our own infrastructure? That’s more my thing. Otherwise, I’m a bit worried about the future. Nephilia—all well and good, Björn—I don’t mean to offend you—but that’s not going to save Germany. We need to see what becomes of all these engineers. I could imagine that all the value creation—especially the margins—will shift to the big players and the Nvidias of this world, and that not much will remain here. That’s kind of my concern.

Björn Rieckhoff: You have this dependency. That’s why we really have no choice but to remain committed to a free, market-based approach. If things become more authoritarian in the future, we’ll actually find ourselves at the very bottom of the food chain. We need to be clear about that. That’s why our path forward can only be to work as collaboratively as possible with the various stakeholders, both in the private sector and in politics. I hinted at this at the beginning: when you consider the areas in which Nvidia has now established its de facto monopoly. On the one hand, this visit to Berlin is, of course, great for the chancellor, who gets to sit there and get some good publicity. But for Nvidia, it’s still primarily a sales issue—and selling chips is simply the top priority. In Europe in particular, there’s this massive push toward Sovereign AI—being self-reliant. If you look at where Nvidia has positioned itself in recent months: platform and open-source models are distributed via Hugging Face, which has been owned by Nvidia since September. Agile Robots was an early adopter of the Telekom Cloud, which runs on 10,000 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs. And now, in turn, Agile Robots is receiving a minority stake from Nvidia. This means Nvidia has a stake in its own customer, so to speak. It’s simply become a beautifully closed loop. They’ve wedged themselves into every point in the value chain and are doing it very, very smartly. The idea that you could suddenly acquire a European counterpart—I don’t want to portray it as absurd, because we have some very good initiatives here in Germany. But it’s also a question of speed of execution. And in that regard, others simply have such a lead that it’s difficult to catch up—if not impossible.

Jan Thomas: At the same time, I had the CTO of Isar Aerospace as a guest here. He also said: Of course, SpaceX has a huge head start, but we’re doing this anyway because we believe we need an alternative here in Germany—for the sake of sovereignty. We’re still going to develop a model that can coexist. Maybe it’ll be smaller, maybe it’ll take a few more years—he was fully aware that they’re ten years behind. But getting up in the morning and saying, “We still want to have something of our own,” is better to me than saying, “Let’s just sign contracts with SpaceX.” Because then you see just how at their mercy you are. We don’t need to go through all the examples right now, but there are plenty of them.

Björn Rieckhoff: I agree with you one hundred percent and fully support such initiatives. I just want to say: The infrastructure that Isar Aerospace is building—I haven’t looked into it yet—is probably also very international in nature and doesn’t rely solely on sovereign AI. Because—as a side note—there’s often no other way. Don’t get me wrong: I’m 100 percent in favor of this. You know I’m very pro-Europe and very liberal when it comes to this. I’m not a fan of claiming that there’s only one version of the future, shaped by the U.S. and China. I’m a strong advocate for Europe and for its ambition to remain a highly relevant part of this world, including economically. I just want to say: If we want to do that, then we might have to spend a little more than 100 million, while others are investing 700 billion.

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Jan Thomas: Absolutely, yes. First of all—AI Chancellor Merz: I don’t even know which of the two benefited more from the visit. For Merz, I think it’s also important to show: I have a vision for the future; I’m not just focused on the here and now and the past. But I was thinking the other day—as I said, I’m a big fan of Verena Pausder, I think she’s doing a great job as CEO of the German Startups Association and fits the role perfectly—when the whole issue with the gas rebate came up, another really annoying topic; with some things, you just can’t stop shaking your head: There are things where the startup scene could step up and say, “We’ll solve this.” And not in the sense of “we’ll give people a discount on a gas voucher,” but rather: Take a look around—there’s always just one driver in every car; the other three seats are always empty. On average, you could probably say: one and a half people per car.”

Björn Rieckhoff: Yes.

Jan Thomas: That’s an issue where, as far as I’m concerned, three smart people from the startup scene could just get three million from the federal government, sit down, and within—I don’t know—four weeks, build a solution, an app. And then you can just forget about the whole gas rebate issue for now. To get that mindset across: Hey, we startups are actually the future, and we’ll demonstrate that with a striking example. And then please understand this too: Build more of your own companies and your own infrastructure here, tap into the pension funds, and invest a lot more money—whatever it takes. For years, there have been plenty of naysayers claiming there’s not enough money in it. Well, actually, that’s not true. It’s just that people don’t get it, I think.

Björn Rieckhoff: Yeah, and I’m a little unsure about where to draw the line here.

Jan Thomas: Yeah, yeah, I didn’t mean to… I just got carried away.

Björn Rieckhoff: No, you’re absolutely right to put it that way. What I think we need right now—and that’s why I value our conversations so much—is a wake-up call. That involves emotion; it involves people who stand up and clearly state their opinions, even publicly. I think we’ve kind of forgotten how to debate in recent years. That’s why I think it’s great that you bring this up—even passionately—every once in a while. We just have to be careful: if we start talking about pension funds now, we’ll lose our train of thought a bit.

Jan Thomas: Yeah, you’re right. So, speaking of shaking our heads, let’s move on to the second topic.

Björn Rieckhoff: Exactly, nice transition.

Jan Thomas: Because that’s one of those things where you think: It could be so simple.

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Björn Rieckhoff: It could be so simple. I thought it was great when EU Inc. attempted earlier this year—actually, they’d been working on it for quite some time, but this was the final push—to give Europe its own “Delaware,” if you want to put it that way. The idea: a uniform legal structure for startups that would function the same way in all 27 EU member states and would be added as the 28th legal regime. Specifically, the Commission proposed in March—Ursula von der Leyen received a great deal of applause for it at the time—that companies could be founded entirely digitally in 48 hours, for a maximum of 100 euros, with no minimum capital requirement, shares transferred without a notary, and so on. You might have thought that a few of these elements would clash somewhat with Germany’s penchant for notary chambers, legislation, and the like. In fact, however, I believe Germany remains a very strong supporter of the idea. It’s just that implementation is currently a bit of a snag, to put it neutrally. So much so that EU Inc. wrote last week, I believe: “Dear Europe, why are you killing it?” The background is that we’re currently getting bogged down in the implementation. A central registry, as originally envisioned, was already struck from the European Council’s first compromise text. Employee stock options remain a major issue; they’re now limited to companies with fewer than 1,000 employees and less than 450 million euros in revenue. You also no longer necessarily have the freedom to choose your seat, as was originally envisioned. I took a look: 1,418 amendments have been submitted. We’re getting a bit lost in the implementation process. And the original goal of making this a reality by 2027 has actually become completely absurd. Even if an agreement is reached by the end of 2026, implementation probably won’t happen until 2028. Unfortunately, the wheels of bureaucracy turn very, very slowly. And very good initiatives are currently being severely watered down, which I find a tremendous shame. Because that would mean you might not have to spout so many emotional slogans and instead would have a wonderful system where you could simply say: Hey, we have a European Economic Area—and not just in name, but in reality. That would be nice.

Jan Thomas: That would be absolutely great. And really, let me say it again: It could be so simple. And then afterward you ask yourself… We’re dealing with so many critics of Europe right now, and you want to counter them and say: Look, these are the benefits; this is how Europe works. And when I hear something like that, I get the feeling that you almost have to justify why you’re pro-Europe. That can’t be reality, Björn. That’s a recipe for stagnation.

Björn Rieckhoff: That’s actually a recipe for gridlock. I think it’s a bit like the problem that used to be called “small-state mentality” in Germany after the Middle Ages. It keeps coming back to haunt us. If individual member states don’t back down from their positions—some of which are, admittedly, justified—we won’t reach a solution that lives up to the original vision. Instead, we’ll end up with a clearly half-baked compromise that was well-intentioned but no longer does justice to the issue at hand. I found it interesting to see who’s currently standing in the way and questioning the legal basis of the entire instrument: Austria is among them—well, a government that acts relatively conservatively in some respects—along with Bulgaria and Slovakia. As for the tax rules, I’ve read that Estonia has resisted the implications of “EU Inc.” a bit. I found that intriguing because Estonia is actually the model country for startups, where you can set up your company in the blink of an eye. Side note: Perhaps they also see a certain competitive advantage over the other EU member states slipping away as a result. All I’m saying is: There are always national interests at play, some of which run counter to the larger project. I’d like to see everyone realize that the collective good is better served if we step back a bit from our individual positions or allow more leeway so that good proposals can emerge. And back to Jensen Huang: I don’t know exactly how he put it in English, but the article said he accuses Europe of overthinking things.

Jan Thomas: That’s kind of a prime example, you know—both things happened on the same day: the visit and this, let’s say, discussion about co-determination. “Overthinking” is definitely a good term. And I have no idea how we could move away from that—or even in which direction the call to action could go.

Björn Rieckhoff: For me, this is actually an issue where you have to think a little more broadly. We are, after all, a union of states, and we only grant the EU Parliament a certain minimum degree of autonomy—to put it in layman’s terms. Actually, you have to go in and say: Every single member state needs to put its ego aside a little and give the whole much, much more power—to put it bluntly—knowing that this will put them in a better position. Especially in a globalized world with the U.S. and China, where you’re simply left behind if you don’t have that scale. In a unified EU, you’d have that scale to stand up to the whole thing and, from our perspective, restore a certain balance. You can’t pull that off on your own, alone in Germany. Not to mention Estonia or Slovakia. I really like Emmanuel Macron for his foreign policy, I have to say, because to me he stands for a very liberal economic vision. And I always find it interesting how liberal that vision is when France and Germany position themselves as the hard core of the EU. Of course, that vision often gets lost in the various committees where individual countries pursue their own ambitions and goals. But I believe we simply need to act more in line with this fundamental European ideal, recognizing that we’re stronger together—to put it in clichéd terms.

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Jan Thomas: I think we can leave it at that, Björn. We could probably go off in all sorts of directions now, but I think that’s a good way to wrap things up. Or do you think we’ve left out anything important?

Björn Rieckhoff: Nah. Same goes here: Constant dripping wears away the stone. Let’s keep sprinkling in episodes like this—ones that are perhaps less driven by investment and exits and more politically ambitious.

Jan Thomas: Yeah, but it can’t drip too slowly either, and the stone can’t be too hard, in my opinion.

Björn Rieckhoff: Exactly, exactly.

Jan Thomas: Do you know what I mean?

Björn Rieckhoff: And the more of that spirit of optimism we can generate, the better.

Jan Thomas: Yeah. And that shouldn’t—this is the whole EU-Inc thing—be picked apart and overanalyzed by administrators.

Björn Rieckhoff: Right.

Jan Thomas: All right, then. Björn, that was fun. I’m looking forward to an update on Nephilia next time. I didn’t mean to downplay it at all—I think what you’re doing there is great. I just wanted to say: It’s not going to save Germany. We’ll have to pin our hopes more on the Nvidias of this world—or on our own solution.

Björn Rieckhoff: Yeah, and I didn’t misunderstand that at all. I know I’m not doing anything rocket science here.

Jan Thomas: No, no, that’s not what I mean at all. I think it’s great, as I said. And it’s also kind of a blueprint. That’s why I recommend we listen to our last episode again, because it shows what you can do with AI these days—with a good idea and the coding skills or tools you have at your disposal. It’s pretty cool.

Björn Rieckhoff: Yeah, totally. I’d encourage everyone to do it. That’s exactly the kind of progress—on a “small” scale, so to speak—that we need to see. When you add it all up, it’ll spark some real momentum. I’m pretty sure of that.

Jan Thomas: Yeah. And that leads to a certain impatience because suddenly everything is moving faster—so you want to wait even less. But okay.

Björn Rieckhoff: That’s right, yes.

Jan Thomas: We’re wrapping up now, Björn. That was fun.

Björn Rieckhoff: Me too. Thank you very much.

Jan Thomas: An important discussion. See you next time.

Björn Rieckhoff: See you later, ciao.

Jan Thomas: Take care, ciao.

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About Björn Rieckhoff

Björn Rieckhoff is the founder of Nephilia and a business angel with ten years of experience in early-stage venture capital. He helped build Cavalry Ventures as its first employee and later became a partner of the fund. Nephilia grew out of around 100 transactions and board seats from seed to Series B: an information service that delivers investor selection for a founder's round directly inside their own AI assistant. Alongside it, he remains a sparring partner for entrepreneurs.

About Startup Insider

Startup Insider is the industry portal for the startup scene in the DACH region. It covers news from all regions and industries, along with an overview of key players and events in the German-speaking startup world.

Links

• Nephilia – Informationsdienst für Gründer (Public Beta)
• Launch Nephilia: Investorenauswahl per MCP direkt im eigenen KI-Assistenten (im Gespräch empfohlene vorherige Folge)
• Softbanks 75-Milliarden-Investition in Frankreich – Europas KI-Souveränität entsteht, aber nicht durch Europa
• Europas KI-Infrastruktur: Kann Nscale die Lücke zu US-Giganten schließen?