One AI company's battle against Europe's tech roadblocks

“It's absurd that we want to finance Europe and at the same time European pension funds are investing in US bonds”, says Andreas Schwarzenbrunner from Speedinvest, an EU venture fund.

Schwarzenbrunner is quick to point out that Europe has made significant progress after realising it missed the boat for thirty years. There is now a working ecosystem for financing young companies. Still, European tech companies face big problems in accessing financing – both for building prototypes and then, once they have proven the tech, for expanding, optimally across the EU.

Even if they manage to do so, US Big Tech is lurking with many billions in cash which they will gladly use to snap up (and close down) promising start-ups.

Kölsch says that Seedbox.AI is already being courted by non-European companies like AMD and Nvidia while European ones are failing to keep up with the speed of technical innovation.

“No company in Germany... really understands what we do”, he says. “Who understands us is the Americans.”

Fundamentally Europe can throw billions at trying to catch up but it will be perpetually behind until it can re-organise its rules and regulations to be more competitive