... and didn't hit?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, um, there's been so much talk about like AI sovereignty, which can be interpreted in different ways.

But, you know, broadly speaking, the one of I, I as a country want to have independence or control over my own destiny when it comes to, uh, building models, um, uh, training them, serving them, having the infrastructure for it and the energy, et cetera.

And, um, and my bet was w- there would be this concept of like, uh, you know, um, AI neutrality in, in...

That, that kind of mirrors like, um, uh, sort of mutual defense, um, agreements where a country is like too small to be able to afford, uh, you know, its own military or its own defenses.

What do key, what do you hear people care, caring about?

... have to, to have-- find the sort of like steady state.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think these are all, these are all important questions.

I mean, the numbers are astonishing.

You know, hyperscale is spending, you know, 700 and something billion dollars a year and potentially doubling like year on year.

Like Neo cloud's also ripping to billions of contracted revenue and, you know, gigawatts of compute.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Um, you know, so I-I think at the end of the day, like you gotta pick what, what flavor's good for you, and then try as best as you can to bring the best product to the market given your circumstances.

And, you know, I was fortunate with fund three to be able to really come with like a blank slate with, you know, long-term partners and say, "This is what I think is gonna be the most convincing model," you know, right up to $15 million in first checks-

Yeah.

And then that narrative changes significantly once you start seeing Shahid, like, drones hit, you know, UK bases in Cyprus, and you realize, like, okay, the border to Southern Europe actually comes over the Mediterranean in Greece.

Um, I think the, the other part, uh, which is, which is interesting is, like, ambitions change.

And, um, and I think in Europe where traditionally there's been fewer role models that one can look to and say, "I'm gonna be like that person, and I know the path"-

Mm-hmm.

Um, there's a bit of a bifurcation.

Like, you have the sort of large lab model companies that are raising, you know, significant amounts of money.

And I think those are also potentially good investments, but they, uh, they definitely cater to a certain type of venture firm.

Um, and then you have the other category, which is potentially more pragmatic entrepreneurs going for less of the general purpose AI, but more looking at kind of what use case can they solve with a general purpose AI system.

And, uh, and those ones are a little bit more modest.

But in general, yeah, you've seen, you know, inflation of, of round sizes, but also actually interest, um, from customers to buy this stuff.

Sure.