🤡 The Dumbest Tech of 2025, Nvidia’s VC Strategy and 398B Deep Tech Spinouts...
Max. 4:50 min read
Hey, it’s Jannis. Happy new year 🎆
here’s a small recap of 2025 and what’s been happening lately across the VC universe.
🔥 These are the 5 most important things:Weekly Spotlight:
🎓 2025 in Review: European Deep Tech Spinouts Hit $398B and Raise $9.1B
European universities have become one of the strongest deep tech pipelines globally. Dealroom says 76 spinouts hit either $1B valuation or $100M revenue in 2025. Think Iceye, IQM, Isar Aerospace, Synthesia, Tekever.
Total ecosystem value is now $398B, and spinouts raised $9.1B in 2025. That is close to an all time high, even while broader European VC is still far below 2021.
New funds like PSV Hafnium and U2V are doubling down on university born startups beyond the usual Oxford, Cambridge, ETH Zurich pipeline. Capital continues to flow into sectors like nuclear, space, drones, and advanced manufacturing.
The weak spot remains late stage capital. Nearly half still comes from the US, meaning Europe builds the tech but often gives up upside on the growth rounds.
Takeaway: spinouts became Europe’s most reliable deep tech engine in 2025 and that momentum looks set to continue in 2026. Read more
Inside/VC Shorts
📰 News Shorts:
🪖 US Captures Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro (🇺🇸)
You probably saw it in the news. US forces carried out overnight airstrikes in Venezuela on January 3. and captured Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, flying them to New York to face narcoterrorism charges.
Venezuela says 80 plus people were killed. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez is now acting president and calls it an illegal kidnapping.
Donald Trump said the US will run Venezuela temporarily and involve American oil companies (because, well, there’s a lot of oil down there and Washington never misses that kind of detail), triggering global backlash and a UN Security Council meeting. Read more
Extra: The Weirdest Things That Happened In Tech 2025 🤡
Here are some of the most what-on-earth-is-going-on moments from 2025:
• A lawyer named Mark Zuckerberg sued Mark Zuckerberg because Meta kept flagging him for “impersonation” — despite that being his real name.
• An engineer secretly worked multiple full time startup jobs at once, got caught… and some founders still called him a legend.
• Mark Zuckerberg allegedly delivered soup to OpenAI staff he wanted to poach… so OpenAI started delivering soup back.
• Investor Nat Friedman recruited strangers to build a 5000-piece Lego set: NDA required. Pizza included.
• Bryan Johnson livestreamed a psychedelic “longevity experiment”, mostly lying under a blanket while guests talked theology.
• AI models playing Pokémon panicked about “dying”, while another intentionally “killed itself” to respawn, and failed.
• Elon Musk launched a jealous anime AI girlfriend, who shouts expletives if she feels ignored.
• A “smart toilet camera” promised end-to-end encryption… but wasn’t actually end-to-end encrypted. Yes. Really.
🚀 Startup Shorts:
🎓 Dropping Out Is Now A Founder Flex Again (🇺🇸)
VCs are warming up to college dropouts as a badge of conviction again, especially in the AI wave. At YC Demo Day, founders literally highlight “I dropped out” like it is a credential.
Here’s a small reality check though: Most successful founders still have degrees. Big AI names like Cursor and Cognition also graduated.
Some students now even quit in their final semester because they fear a diploma means they “missed the wave”. Others say the real value of uni is still the network and the LinkedIn logo. Read more
🚗 BYD is now the global EV leader (🇨🇳🇺🇸)
BYD delivered 2.26M EVs in 2025, officially passing Tesla, which ended the year at 1.63M. It is Tesla’s second annual sales decline, down 9% YoY, which is a big psychological shift.
On Tesla specifically: Q4 came in at 418,227 deliveries. A lot of US buyers rushed to get cars before the $7,500 tax credit expired, and demand slumped afterward.
Tesla is also losing ground in China and Europe, where Chinese EVs are cheaper and scaling faster, especially in the mid-range segment. Read more
Data: We just built a Market Map of the European space ecosystem for anyone who wants the full picture. It shows the companies shaping launch, satellites, Earth observation and space infrastructure across Europe. If you’re interested, here’s the link:
🤖 Nvidia is basically running a VC fund at this point (🇺🇸)
Nvidia is pouring money into the AI ecosystem at insane scale. In 2025 it took part in around 67 startup rounds, not even counting its separate NVentures arm.
We are talking the biggest names in AI: OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, Cursor, Figure, Wayve, CoreWeave, Cohere, Perplexity, Crusoe, Reflection AI and more. Many of these checks are tied to huge compute deals. Nvidia invests, the startup buys Nvidia hardware, the cycle repeats.
The crazy part is that Nvidia is now shaping the entire AI stack from chips to models to infrastructure. If you are building anything serious in AI, you either buy Nvidia or you take their money and then buy more Nvidia. With a $4.6T market cap, this is less “VC for returns” and more strategic lock in of future GPU demand across the stack. Read more
Here are some more interesting reads:
VCs predict enterprises will spend more on AI in 2026 — through fewer vendors
Tech billionaires cashed out $16 billion in 2025 as stocks soared
💸 Fundraising + Acquisition Shorts:
🧠 Moonshot AI raises $500M in Series C (🇨🇳)
Moonshot AI secured $500M in fresh capital, valuing the Chinese AI unicorn at over $4B. Major domestic investors joined the round as the company scales its Kimi assistant and foundation models to compete with global leaders.
The new funding fuels massive compute investment and continued product rollout, showing how intense AI funding in China remains. Read more
⚡ Kraken spins out with $1B in new funding at $8.65B valuation (🇬🇧)
Octopus Energy Group is spinning out Kraken after securing about $1B from investors including D1 Capital, Fidelity and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, valuing the AI powered utility platform at $8.65B. Kraken now serves over 70M customer accounts worldwide and will scale globally as an independent company. Read more
🤖 Meta acquires Manus in a deal worth about $2B (🌏)
Meta has bought Singapore based AI startup Manus in a transaction valued at roughly $2B, marking one of the largest AI exits of the week.
Manus builds advanced AI agent technology that Meta plans to integrate across its products as it accelerates its overall AI strategy. Read more
🧑💻 Career Corner: Hot VC Internships (US + EU)Internships
🇺🇸 Scale Asia Ventures - VC Investment Intern (Palo Alto)
🇫🇷 Groupe SEB - VC Intern (Écully)
🇸🇬 TNB Aura - VC Marketing Intern (Singapore)
🇺🇸 Naver Ventures - VC Intern (Redwood City)
🇭🇰 Kirin - Ventures Capital Intern (Hongkong)
🇩🇪 Planet A Ventures - Platform & Ops Intern (Berlin)
🇩🇪 First Momentum Ventures - Visiting Analyst (Munich)
🇩🇪 b2venture - Internship Growth Investments (Berlin)
🇩🇪 Realyze Ventures - VC Intern (Cologne)
That’s it for today. Catch you next week with more startup and VC stories worth your time.
If you enjoyed this one, a quick ♥️ or share goes a long way.
Cheers,
Jannis ✌️