Welcome to Viewpoints, news and investment activity covering the next era of computing - brought to you by FOV Ventures.

This Month:

• European robotics scales: Sereact's $110M raise and TUM's RoboGym

• Apple at 50: John Ternus on spatial computing's inevitability

• Portfolio wins: Distance x Kia, Scenario MCP, nunu's William launch

Dave Haynes, Petri Rajahalme, Sointu Karjalainen & David Ripert (FOV Ventures)

The last 18 months have seen European robotics move from research-heavy to infrastructure-heavy. The capital is flowing into the enabling layer - AI models, training facilities, and sovereign data platforms that let robots learn faster and deploy more reliably.

April brought two significant announcements that illustrate this shift. Sereact raised $110M in Series B to fund Cortex 2, an AI model that trains robots on different physical behaviours and picks the one most likely to succeed. The focus is narrower, they don't build robots or sell services, just the AI model that runs across any hardware - single arm, dual arm, humanoid, fixed cell. Meanwhile, Neura Robotics and TUM launched the TUM RoboGym, Europe's largest Physical AI training center, with €17M committed and 2,300 m² of space where humanoid robots will train under real-world conditions from mid-2026. The data feeds Neuraverse, Neura's hardware-agnostic training platform, creating a sovereign data flywheel for European robotics.

We spoke with Dr. Máté Péntek from TUM Venture Labs, who's building this infrastructure, about Europe's advantages in physical AI and where the commercial opportunities are. Read the full conversation here

These are part of a broader pattern where the constraint in robotics is shifting from "can we build capable hardware" to "can we generate enough high-quality training data to make robots work reliably in unstructured environments," this month has also seen NVIDIA continuing to cement its position as the platform layer beneath robotics with new open models, and Japan committing $6.3B to physical AI as a matter of national survival.

We wrote last month about how the infrastructure layer is being built in real-time across geographies, with Europe's advantage is in manufacturing expertise, deep tech and operational environments that generate training data US labs can't easily replicate.

That infrastructure push extends beyond robotics into how we interact with intelligent systems in the physical world more broadly. Apple's 50th birthday this week brought that into sharper focus. John Ternus is stepping in as CEO with a hardware background/ And in his first interview as incoming CEO, he said Apple is still in the "early innings of spatial computing" and that combining the digital and physical world is an "inevitability."

He didn't give a timeline for smart glasses but reiterated Vision Pro as "a peek of the future." With Ternus' hardware background, the question now is which form factor wins and when.

FOV NEWS

Pathways: The Female LP Report 2026

Pathways 2026: the first benchmark on female LP participation in European venture capital.

There's a piece missing from the diversity conversation in venture: the LP layer. The people writing cheques to fund managers. They've never been measured.

We wanted to do our part. So we ran the first survey on female LP participation in European venture capital. Six months across 21 countries. Starting with data.

We expected a confidence gap. We found a design gap. 8 in 10 of the women we surveyed say they're ready to invest in venture capital today. Almost none have access to a structure that fits.

Launched live at the Pathways Summit in Helsinki with Tesi and 15 partners.

Europe's Physical AI Playbook: Q&A with Dr. Máté Péntek, TUM Venture Labs

We spoke with Dr. Máté Péntek from TUM Venture Labs about Europe's position in physical AI and robotics. Máté is at the center of the infrastructure buildout happening across European universities - including the TUM RoboGym we mentioned above.

The conversation covers why the built environment is the right anchor for physical AI, where Europe has credible advantages (precision engineering, industrial relationships, infrastructure expertise), how sovereignty and dual-use change the strategic picture, and why moving from research to revenue is the priority now.

FOV Portfolio News

• Distance Technologies announced their collaboration with Kia to integrate Distance's panoramic Lightfield HUD inside the Kia Vision Meta Turismo concept car. Distance's true 3D lightfield places images, graphics, and driving intelligence naturally within the real world at correct depth and distance. The windshield becomes the interface with the visual intelligence layer moving from smartphones and headsets into environments we already inhabit. more here

• Scenario opened their MCP server to public beta, connecting AI agents directly to Scenario's full generation stack - images, video, 3D, audio, hundreds of models, custom trained models, assets, and workflows. Works with Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, and any MCP-compatible environment. more here

• nunu.ai launched William - the first AI agent with a phone. No SDKs, no integrations, no code. William sees the screen, taps, scrolls, types, and completes tasks end-to-end on real devices. Major gaming and enterprise companies are using it in production for QA, compliance, and market research workflows. The public beta is live now. more here

• M-XR launched their image-to-material foundational model. Input a clean 3D mesh and get six PBR maps back. The foundation is M-XR Marso measured data from years of physically capturing real-world materials. That measured PBR data is the moat, separating it from synthetic, scraped, or non-standardized alternatives. more here

• Ray Browser opened unlimited credits. Ray Unlimited lets you describe any app or workflow and builds it with no code. Gmail, Drive, Slack connected in a single prompt. The browser as AI interface layer is underappreciated, and this is the fastest way to understand why it matters. more here

• Flow Computing has been meeting with customers and investors across Silicon Valley. Strong signal: growing interest from both customers and investors, highly engaged technical conversations, and multiple discussions moving forward. Particularly encouraging traction with US-based investors focused on semiconductor and computing technologies. more here

• Spogen evolved from AI-powered machinery assistance into a broader operational knowledge platform for industrial equipment. Through customer deployments, they've seen how resource-intensive it is for industrial teams to build and maintain the structured operational knowledge that modern support and AI systems depend on. The platform now covers the full lifecycle from creation to delivery and continuous improvement. New website reflects this evolution. more here

FOV Job Board

• Roro - UI Programmer

• ai|coustics - Talent Pool: Audio Data Engineering & Machine Learning (Berlin, Germany, Mid-Senior Level)

• Waveline has multiple positions: Growth Intern (United States, Internship) and QA Product Support Specialist (Remote, Entry Level)

• GEEIQ - Client Manager (London, UK, Mid-Senior Level)

• Iconic AI has multiple positions in London, UK: AI Research Scientist/Engineer for Expressive Embodiment, AI Research Scientist for Open-Endedness & Reinforcement Learning, and AI Research Engineer for Model Optimization

• Levtek - Mechanical Engineer (Malmö, Sweden, Senior)

• M-XR - MTS Software Engineer (London, UK, Mid-Senior Level)

View all open roles here

Following the FOV Vantage Point Robotics summit, we sat down with one of our fireside speakers to unpack the European Physical AI thesis. Below is the conversation, lightly edited for clarity.

Dr.-Ing. Máté Péntek is the Director of the Built Environment focus area at the TUM Venture Labs, where he eagerly supports research and technology transfer from academia to the market through the entrepreneurial endeavour of startups. His background encompasses research on applied supercomputing to structural and civil engineering, consulting, and startup involvement.

TUM Venture Labs have established themselves as a premier European deep-tech hub, supporting over 1,100 start-up teams in 2024 alone and contributing to a record 103 spin-offs. Ranked #1 in Europe for three consecutive years (2024-2026), they foster major successes, including the unicorn Isar Aerospace (reaching unicorn status in 2025) and numerous AI and health-tech ventures.

Q1. Why is the built environment the right reality anchor for Physical AI?

Physical AI becomes most meaningful when it leaves the lab and enters complex, constrained, high-value environments. Construction sites, existing building stock, infrastructure networks, logistics hubs, tunnels, industrial assets, and cities are exactly that.

From this perspective, Europe's robotics opportunity may be less about general-purpose humanoids and more about task-specific systems: inspection robots, maintenance drones, retrofitted machinery, teleoperation, assisted surveying, concrete spraying, painting, demolition, and infrastructure monitoring.

The built environment forces the question: can Physical AI work under real-world constraints?

Q2. Where does Europe actually have a credible advantage, and what does it look like in practice?

This is where Europe has a credible edge. We have world-class technical universities, deep industrial relationships, precision engineering capabilities, dense infrastructure, demanding customers, and a strong need to retrofit, reuse, and upgrade existing assets.

Munich and TUM are one example of this advantage in action: robotics and AI research, venture-building infrastructure through TUM Venture Labs and UnternehmerTUM, strong industrial proximity, and a startup ecosystem increasingly focused on deeptech translation.

Alongside the frontier technology narrative, this matters because Europe's Physical AI thesis is strongest when it is tied to real industrial demand.

Q3. How do sovereignty and dual-use change the strategic picture?

The third layer is strategic. Robotics, autonomy, sensing, AI infrastructure, cyber-physical systems, and dual-use technologies are becoming central to sovereignty, resilience, and infrastructure security. What used to be niche research is now part of Europe's strategic capability stack.

That creates a moat: not just technical IP, but ecosystems that can connect research, founders, industrial customers, public mandates, and capital.

Q4. So what is your verdict on moving Europe from research to revenue, and why do convenings like Vantage Point matter?

Europe does not lack technical depth. It lacks enough speed, connectivity, and scale in turning that depth into category-defining companies. This has been acknowledged by many, repeated by even more. So the priority now is clear: move faster from research to revenue, from pilots to production, and from ecosystem potential to venture-scale outcomes.

That requires early-stage support for technical founders, more ambitious industrial pilots, capital that understands deeptech timelines, and stronger European collaboration across universities, startups, corporates, investors, and public actors.

My takeaway: Europe has the ingredients to shape Physical AI. The question is whether we can connect and scale them quickly enough.

That is why convenings like Vantage Point matter. They aim to turn a fragmented European discourse into a shared ecosystem and investment thesis.

You can find a recap of FOV Ventures's Vantage Point: Robotics Edition 2026 here.

In 2025, we started asking a simple question: why aren't more women investing in venture capital funds?

Not as founders. That conversation is well-documented. As Limited Partners. The people who write the cheques that fund the funds.

Six months later, with respondents from 21 countries, I think we got a more useful answer than the one we expected. We expected to find a confidence gap. The data shows something else.

8 in 10 say they're ready to invest in venture capital today. Almost none have a way in. Almost none have been told where to start. The barrier isn't confidence. It's a design gap. The LP layer between angel cheques and institutional fund commitments hasn't been built.

IT'S NOT CONFIDENCE. IT'S DESIGN.

Before we ran the survey, the working assumption I'd built up across a lot of conversations was that the answer would be some mix of confidence, knowledge, or risk appetite. Get women more comfortable with the asset class, and the participation gap closes. The data didn't back that up.

76% of respondents come from finance, VC, or angel investing backgrounds. The confidence-scale gap between active LPs and explorers is 0.38 points on a five-point scale. Basically noise. And the famous cliff (94% would invest at €10K, 38% at €100K) doesn't show a willingness gap. It shows a regulated ticket size that almost no fund actually offers. And the bigger frame: 81% of respondents want in. 3.6% have a way. A 77-point access gap that confidence can't explain.

So if it isn't confidence, what is it? It's a design gap. Specifically: ticket sizes set above where most of this capital actually sits, regulatory tiers where a €10K position in a diversified VC fund triggers higher friction than a €50K position in a single startup, FoF concentration preferences that filter out smaller cheques before discovery even starts, and a network-gated discovery layer where the people who hear about funds are mostly the people who already know other LPs.Not just women. Not just VC.

Not just women. Not just VC.

This isn't a women-in-VC story. It's a missing-layer-of-European-VC story. Sub-€100K LP capital is where most emerging LPs want to start. It's also where a lot of operators, angels, and family-office juniors sit.

Feeder funds, syndicates, and pooled vehicles do exist. But they're scattered, network-gated, and rarely surface outside an existing LP circle. And VC fund LP investing isn't angel investing. 10-year lockups, real loss risk, slow capital return. The bar is real. The demand is too. 80% of respondents are interested in a pooled structure. 72% prefer pooled over direct. The supply hasn't been built for the entry tier.

This is a snapshot, not an answer. A start, not the last word. The point isn't that Pathways has solved anything. The point is that we're now measuring it, together with 15 partners. We hope everyone working on this takes part in what comes next.

THREE ASKS

There's real capital looking for a way in. The market exists. The product hasn't been built.

Here are three things I'm asking the people who design this layer to do next. The full report goes deeper, with audience-specific recommendations for GPs, LPs, FoFs, ecosystem, and policy.

1. Measure what's missing.

   No European body currently tracks LP diversity. Preqin, Invest Europe, the national VC associations all measure GP-side composition extensively. The LP side has been a data void. That void protects no one. It also costs FoFs the ability to read GP LP-base concentration as a portfolio risk signal, which matters more, not less, as the cycle keeps testing how stable funds' capital sources actually are. The fix is procedural, not philosophical: make LP-base composition a routine diligence question, the way LP geography or vintage already is. What gets measured gets managed. What isn't measured can't be priced.
   

   "This data makes clear that the issue isn't a lack of diverse capital, but a lack of access."

   Meghan Stevenson-Krausz, CEO, Diversity VC
   

2. Design for the entry tier.

   60% of respondents cite minimum ticket size as the #1 barrier. Twice the next factor. Most have the wealth to invest more. They want a smaller way in first. That's a fund-design choice, not a market constraint. Lower-ticket structures already exist: feeder funds, pooled vehicles, syndicate layers. They need broader distribution, not just network-gated access. A €25K LP today is a €100K allocator in five years and a €500K commitment in a decade. This is a graduation path, not a destination. GPs who treat it that way build a more diversified, more durable LP base than GPs who don't.
   

   "Experienced women who want to invest in funds but are locked out by EUR 100K minimums and network-gated access. This research has measured what the industry has preferred not to see."

   Matt Penneycard, Co-founding Partner, Ada Ventures
   

3. Make the pathway visible.

   82% of respondents have never received guidance from a bank or wealth manager on VC investing. Fund discovery runs almost entirely on personal networks. If you're not already connected, you don't hear about opportunities. The fix has two parts. First, surface the diverse LPs who already exist, so aspiring LPs can see the pathway is real. Second, build the structured education and community on-ramps that personal networks have so far monopolised. Pathways aren't aspirational when they're invisible. They're aspirational when they're named.
   

   "Diversity in the LP industry is worse than in VC itself. The first step for change is always data — and we need recognition of the diverse LPs that already exist to show that there is a pathway available to aspiring LPs."

   Anisah Osman Britton, Unlock VC

One program already exists. The LP Institute runs a two-month cohort for accredited investors exploring fund-LP investing. Small, peer-led, invitation-based. They've kindly extended their application deadline for the Pathways audience. Mention FOV on the form. The answer to "what does a pathway look like?" should be a real program, not a report or a blog post.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

This is only the beginning. The data is published. The asks are concrete. What happens next depends on whether the people who design the LP layer treat its current shape as a market opportunity or a market failure.

I think it's an opportunity. The capital is there. The interest is there. Nobody has built the structures around it yet.

Read the full report below.

Welcome to Viewpoints, news and investment activity covering the next era of computing - brought to you by FOV Ventures.

This Month:

• Vantage Point: Robotics Edition recap and key takeaways

• FOV Robotics Interactive Market Map 2026 now live

• Doublepoint acquired by Oura - our first Finnish exit

Dave Haynes, Petri Rajahalme, Sointu Karjalainen & David Ripert (FOV Ventures)

We just wrapped Vantage Point: Robotics Edition in London - 300 investors, founders, and operators, 25 speakers, 6 panels, and 14 startup showcases.

The conversations showed how much has shifted in 18 months. Early-stage robotics companies now have customers, deployment pipelines, and paths to unit economics. The focus has moved to scaling - capital structure for hardware-intensive growth, building manufacturing partnerships, and navigating enterprise procurement cycles.

We published a full event recap covering the key sessions: NVIDIA and DeepMind on infrastructure readiness, the research-to-revenue translation problem, where capital is actually flowing, dual-use as default strategy, and what real deployment looks like across logistics, construction, and healthcare.

Recap - VANTAGE POINT: Robotics Edition 2026

300+ robotics investors, founders and operators.

Viewpoints

FOV NEWS

Portfolio Exit: Doublepoint → Oura

Doublepoint has been acquired by Oura for an undisclosed amount. One of our earliest bets from Fund I.

We backed Ohto, Jamin, Lauri and Eemil at seed when they were building gesture recognition tech that many couldn't yet see a use case for. Today they're joining Oura, an $11B company to build the next generation of human-device interaction.

Ohto was an obvious first call (and our first Finnish founder investment) when we launched FOV Ventures in 2020. We completely bought into Doublepoint's vision that new human-computer interfaces would be fundamental building blocks for the next era of computing.

Huge validation for the Finnish deep tech ecosystem, and you can read more about the decision to join Oura on Ohto’s personal blog.

Pathways Summit: The Female LP Report Launch May 6, Helsinki

We're launching the first data-driven report on female LP participation in European venture capital. Over six months, FOV Ventures, Tesi, and partners across 16 countries surveyed women about their relationship with venture capital as an asset class.

Pathways Summit: The Female LP Report Launch · Luma

This is an early invite to the launch of the first data-driven report on female LP participation in European venture capital — launched live in Helsinki.

luma.com/yc41kyjk

The event includes:

• Report launch with key findings and data.

• Workshops and working sessions, including a live DD simulation.

• Networking and facilitated introductions.

This is for women exploring investing in VC funds, GPs building a broader LP base, institutional investors, and anyone working to widen the European VC funding base.

FOV Robotics Market Map 2026 Now Live

We published our European Robotics Market Map - mapping where the next generation of physical AI companies are being built across 12 application verticals and 6 enabling technology layers.

The map covers industrial robotics, logistics, healthcare, agriculture, construction, defence, and the full enabling stack from hardware components to AI models. It's a collaborative resource - contribute companies, corrections, or updates directly.

This is a collaborative map that will continue to evolve and expand - contribute companies, corrections, or updates here.

ICYMI: Europe's Deep Tech Frontier

Last month of Vantage Point, David Ripert published an in-depth analysis on why Europe is positioned to lead in physical AI and robotics. The piece covers Europe's research-to-real-world advantage, structural advantages in spatial computing, and the case for European technological sovereignty.

FOV Portfolio News

• Scenario opened their MCP server to Public Beta, connecting AI agents directly to Scenario's full generation stack - images, video, 3D, audio, hundreds of models, custom trained models, assets, and workflows. More here

• Edailabs (Emma) was named to the VivaTech Top 100 2026 - the only edtech company selected from 100 startups across 12 countries and 28 sectors. Emma now has the 2nd highest retention rate globally among language learning apps, ahead of Babbel and SpeakAI. More here

• ai|coustics launched Quail Voice Focus 2.0, their most powerful speaker isolation model yet. It delivers 10-43% reduction in Word Error Rate under real-world conditions by stripping competing speakers, background noise, echo and codec artifacts before audio reaches ASR. More here

• Flow Computing was selected for the Deep Tech Momentum Watchlist from 5,000+ startups and will be at DTM26 in Berlin meeting with investors, partners, and industry leaders across the deep tech ecosystem. More here

• Starstuff hit 35M views on TikTok (+3M on Instagram) while completing a major infrastructure overhaul. They're preparing to launch their creator program and UGC marketplace, with significant user growth coming from Japan and South Korea. More here

• Move launches Genesis on April 8th - their next-generation inertial motion capture system. Real-time data and post solve, exponentially higher quality than previous systems. Markerless motion capture is here. More here

• Graswald released AI 2.0, rebuilding their platform to become a core operating system for fashion imagery production. The new version organises everything into projects, treating each product as a trackable task. More here

FOV Job Board

• Nunu ai has multiple positions: Growth Intern (United States) and QA Product Support Specialist (Remote)

• ai|coustics has openings in Berlin, Germany: Talent Pool for Audio Data Engineering & Machine Learning, and Content & Growth Marketer

• GEEIQ - Client Manager (London, UK)

• Atopia Space - SDR / Outbound Sales Freelancer (Remote or Munich, Germany)

• Iconic AI has multiple AI Research positions in London, UK across Expressive Embodiment, Reinforcement Learning, and Model Optimization

• Levtek - Mechanical Engineer (Malmö, Sweden)

View all open roles here

We brought 300 investors, founders, and operators together in London on March 25th. We had 25 speakers, 6 panels, 2 keynotes, 14 startup showcases, and even several robots showed up…!

FOV Ventures VANTAGE POINT: Robotics Edition 2026

LinkedIn

The last 18 months has seen a big shift in Robotics, many of the early stage companies raising capital now look very different, with customers, deployment pipelines and clear paths to unit economics.

This is is because as the cost of parts has been dropping, technical capabilities have caught up - robots can navigate warehouses, perform precision tasks, and operate in semi-structured environments reliably enough that companies are buying them.

Our latest Vantage Point event focused on this dawn for Europe in robotics and it was great to host many conversations where founders are working through capital structure for hardware-intensive scaling, figuring out manufacturing partnerships, and navigating procurement cycles. Likewise, there are more investors looking at the sector are trying to separate real traction from research projects dressed up as startups.

At FOV, we've been investing in spatial computing technologies for years - computational optics, 3D sensing, real-time spatial mapping, depth perception. That infrastructure is now essential for robots to navigate physical environments, positioning us at the convergence of AI, spatial computing, and robotics. It was good to bring together founders, investors, and LPs working across this stack.

The Infrastructure Is Ready

Mozhgan Kabiri Chimeh (NVIDIA) opened with a clear read on where we are post-GTC '26: the tooling, compute infrastructure, and simulation environments that startups need to train and deploy physical AI systems are finally production-ready. NVIDIA's partnership with cloud providers like Nebius is building the sim-to-real stack that lets robotics companies tackle data bottlenecks and edge cases without burning through capital on physical infrastructure. Daniel Woods from Nebius walked through how their platform handles the full workflow from synthetic data generation to deployment, cutting iteration cycles from weeks to days for companies building robot foundation models.

Svetlana Grant (Google DeepMind) built on this in her fireside with Dave Haynes, laying out the path to general-purpose robots. The message was, breakthrough robotics companies will be built with frontier AI labs, not isolated from them. When the compute and tooling are available, the bottleneck shifts from "can we build this" to "can we turn this into a real business."

That's where the conversation naturally moved - from technical readiness to commercial reality. Europe produces world-class robotics research, but converting that into companies that can raise, scale, and compete globally remains the challenge. The "From Research to Revenue" panel featuring Kirsty Lloyd-Jukes (Stateful Robotics), Alex Li (UCL/Cortica), Svetlana Grant, and Muji Ahmedi (ARIA) dug into exactly that problem.

The Translation Problem

Talent gravitates to the US because the pay gaps are real and the funding rounds are larger. Early-stage European rounds rarely exceed £3.5M for robotics startups, while US equivalents routinely hit $10M+. The deep tech investor base in Europe remains thin compared to the capital flowing into fintech or enterprise SaaS. These aren't new observations, but what's changing is the response.

ARIA is funding high-risk ideas that traditional VCs and grants won't touch, deliberately backing projects that might fail but could unlock entirely new categories if they work. Universities like Oxford and UCL are making it easier to spin out companies, dismantling bureaucratic barriers that historically made academic founders wait months just to incorporate. Recent successes like Wayve raising $1.5B and Oxa demonstrating autonomous deployments prove the model works when the capital arrives at the right stage.

Kirsty's take was pragmatic - stop pretending Europe can ignore the US. Use the relationship strategically through dual listings, talent arbitrage, and market access. The UK-US connection becomes an advantage if you build for it rather than around it, which set up the capital conversation naturally, because once you accept that European companies will interact with US markets and investors, you need to understand how capital flows into this sector.

Following the Money

The investor panel with Troy Estes (NVIDIA), William Godfrey (Tangible Finance), and Dominic Keen (Britbots) tackled funding reality directly. European rounds remain smaller than US equivalents, but the capital structure conversation is evolving beyond pure equity. William explained how Tangible Finance is opening up debt instruments for hardware-intensive robotics companies, letting founders scale deployments without diluting equity every time they need to manufacture more units. Robotics companies that prove unit economics can now access asset-backed financing and equipment loans to fund fleet expansion - capital tools that didn't exist for this sector five years ago.

Troy's perspective from NVIDIA was - Europe's edge lives in specialist systems solving real industrial problems with domain expertise that's hard to replicate. Manufacturing automation, precision agriculture, infrastructure inspection - sectors where Europe's operational knowledge creates defensible moats.

Dual-Use as Default

The defence panel with Rosalyn Moran (Stanhope AI), Samuel Burrell (Expeditions Fund), and Gui Wainwright (Occam Industries) made the case that dual-use isn't optional anymore - but how you build viable robotics companies in Europe. The continent's sovereign imperative to rebuild defence capabilities is creating sustained procurement demand for autonomous systems, and companies building for both defence and commercial markets aren't hedging their bets.

This focus on real-world deployment conditions carried through to the logistics and built environment panels, where the conversation shifted from what's possible to what's actually being deployed and why.

Where Robots are Deployed Today

The logistics and warehousing panel brought in operators and system integrators who deploy robots daily. Most deployments still happen in structured environments - warehouses, distribution centres, controlled production lines - because these settings offer predictable conditions and economics that justify the investment.

Construction, healthcare, and outdoor environments present harder challenges. The panel featuring Dr. Máté Péntek (TUM Venture Labs) and Ali Haddad (XRLabs) explored what it takes to deploy physical AI where you can't engineer the environment around the robot. Healthcare robots operating in hospital wards need to navigate unpredictable human behaviour, equipment left in hallways, and strict safety protocols. Construction sites change daily, with materials moved, terrain altered, and weather conditions shifting.

The through-line across all these conversations is economic viability. The technology has reached the point where capability isn't the primary constraint, which brings us to the startup showcases and what we're actually seeing in the market.

What We're Seeing

Fourteen companies demoed live during the showcase sessions, and the quality reflected how far the European robotics ecosystem has matured.

These companies have customers, revenue, and deployment pipelines actively delivering value in real operational environments. That shift is significant because it we've moved past the "is this even possible" phase into genuine commercial execution.

Europe has the talent, research institutions, industrial demand, and increasingly the capital infrastructure to build global robotics leaders. The Vantage Point conversations showed that the ecosystem has matured past theoretical discussions about whether this is possible. The real work now is execution - helping founders navigate the capital stack, connecting technical breakthroughs to commercial applications, and building the networks that let everyone learn faster from each other.

That's what Vantage Point was built for, and we'll be back!

Explore the European Robotics Landscape: We've published an interactive market map covering 12 application verticals and 6 enabling technology layers. It's a living resource - contribute companies and corrections directly. HERE.

Read the Full Analysis: Ahead of the event, we published an in-depth piece on why Europe is positioned to lead in physical AI and robotics. HERE.

We built this European robotics landscape to map where the next generation of physical AI companies are being built - and why Europe has genuine advantages in making it happen.

Europe leads in industrial robotics, surgical systems, and precision automation. German companies dominate factory floor automation. Swiss precision robotics sets global benchmarks. The UK produces surgical robotics competing directly with US incumbents. Built on decades of manufacturing heritage, engineering standards, and university research now accelerating into commercial deployment.

At FOV Ventures, we see robotics as part of a broader "beyond screens" paradigm where spatial computing, AI, computer vision, and edge computing converge to enable machines that perceive and interact with the physical world. Technologies originally built for mapping human environments (XR, vision, foundation models) are now the foundation for robots operating in unstructured, real-world settings.

The companies on this map are building at that intersection.

This is a collaborative map - contribute companies, corrections, or updates here.

LINK TO FULL MARKET MAP HERE

The landscape is organised in two layers.

At the top are twelve application verticals - where robots are actually being deployed, the industries being transformed, and the problems being solved.

Underneath sits the enabling stack: hardware components, software infrastructure, and intelligence systems that make those applications possible. Innovation flows upward through this stack. Better sensors enable better perception; better perception enables more capable autonomy; more capable autonomy unlocks deployment environments that were previously out of reach.

Understanding both layers - and how they connect - is essential for understanding where the real opportunity lies.

Scope & Approach: This report maps out the European robotics startup landscape and proposes a taxonomy by application domains and enabling technology layers. We focus on startups (privately-held companies, typically early to growth-stage) and exclude large corporates or public companies, except for a few we consider “European champions.” It is not a comprehensive list and the decision to include which companies is a subjective one. Feel free to reach out to us if you’d like to make sure you’re included.

Market Map Contents

• Layer A: Applications

  • A1. Industrial & Manufacturing Robotics

  • A2. Logistics, Warehouse & Last-Mile Robotics

  • A3. Service Robotics

  • A4. Healthcare & Medical Robotics

  • A5. Agriculture, Forestry & Food Systems

  • A6. Construction, Infrastructure & Built Environme …

  • A7. Drones & Autonomous Vehicles

  • A8. Humanoid & General-Purpose Robots

  • A9. Defence, Security & Dual Use

  • A10. Mobility & Autonomous Transportation Robotics

  • A11. Science, Research & Laboratory Robotics

  • A12. Domestic & Consumer Robotics

• Layer B: The Enabling Stack

  • B1. Robotics AI, Models & Agents

  • B3. Autonomy, Navigation & Localisation

  • B4. Human-Robot Interaction & Interfaces

  • B5. Robotics Middleware, OS & Infrastructure

Building in any of these areas? We'd love to hear from you - and if you're in London on 25 March, join us at Vantage Point: Robotics Edition, our investor summit and startup showcase for Europe's frontier robotics founders. Register here.

Layer A: Applications

A1. Industrial & Manufacturing Robotics

INTERACT WITH THIS MARKET MAP HERE

Europe's manufacturing base is one of its most significant competitive advantages in robotics - and one of its most urgent deployment environments. Germany alone has 429 industrial robots per 10,000 workers, one of the highest densities in the world, and the continent's SME-heavy manufacturing sector creates constant demand for more flexible, more affordable automation. The frontier has moved beyond rigid, single-purpose industrial arms toward collaborative robots that work alongside humans, AI-powered systems that handle variation across SKUs, and no-code programming platforms that let operators retrain robots without external expertise. For the majority of European manufacturers running high-mix, low-volume operations, this flexibility is the unlock that makes automation viable for the first time.

A2. Logistics, Warehouse & Last-Mile Robotics

Logistics was one of the earliest commercial beachheads for robotics in Europe and remains one of the most active. The continent produced some of the world's first warehouse robotics unicorns and continues to attract significant investment across autonomous mobile robots, robotic picking, yard automation, and last-mile delivery. The frontier has shifted to harder problems - unstructured environments, mixed SKU picking, and the genuine complexity of last-mile delivery in European urban settings. As e-commerce volumes grow and warehouse labor tightens, the ROI case only strengthens. Europe's strength here is in systems integration: combining hardware, software, and operational know-how into deployments that actually scale.

A3. Service Robotics

INTERACT WITH THIS MARKET MAP HERE

Service robotics covers a wide range of commercial and consumer deployments - cleaning, security, hospitality, retail - unified by the challenge of operating safely in unpredictable, human-populated environments. Traction has been strongest in cleaning and security, where the operational domain is more bounded and the labor economics are clearest. Hospitality and retail deployments are growing, particularly in high-wage markets where staff turnover is a persistent problem. The form factor that wins in this category is typically one that solves a clear, repeatable operational friction - not one that showcases technical sophistication for its own sake.

A4. Healthcare & Medical Robotics

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Europe's ageing demographics make healthcare robotics less an opportunity and more a necessity. The continent has produced genuine global challengers in surgical robotics, alongside a strong ecosystem in rehabilitation exoskeletons, hospital logistics, and assistive devices. The regulatory environment is demanding - CE marking, clinical validation, long procurement cycles - which acts as both a barrier and a moat. Companies that earn clinical trust early build durable competitive positions. The most accessible near-term opportunity is in hospital operations: disinfection, supply logistics, room turnaround, where ROI is demonstrable and the regulatory burden is lower than in surgical settings.

A5. Agriculture, Forestry & Food Systems

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European agriculture is under compound pressure: labor shortages, climate volatility, sustainability mandates, and thin margins. Robotics is being applied across the full value chain - autonomous weeding and spraying, precision harvesting, crop monitoring, and indoor farming. Europe's diversity of agricultural contexts - large arable operations in France and the Netherlands, specialty horticulture in Spain and Italy, smaller mixed farms across Scandinavia - provides an unusually rich testing ground. The sustainability angle is particularly strong: precision robotics that reduce chemical inputs and cut fuel consumption align directly with EU agricultural policy, creating regulatory tailwind alongside commercial pull.

A6. Construction, Infrastructure & Built Environment

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Construction is among the least automated industries on earth, and Europe's startup ecosystem is beginning to address that seriously. The sector loses enormous value to delays, rework, and labor gaps - all areas where robotics can help. Early traction has come from well-defined sub-tasks: autonomous site monitoring, scaffolding material handling, precision drilling, infrastructure inspection. Europe's large infrastructure pipeline - offshore energy, housing, transport - creates sustained demand. The constraint is deployment complexity: construction sites are among the most unstructured environments any robot navigates, which is why the most traction starts in bounded, repeatable tasks.

A7. Drones & Autonomous Vehicles

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This category spans three distinct but related domains: aerial robotics (drones and UAVs), maritime and underwater systems, and autonomous ground vehicles outside warehouse settings. Europe has particular strength in the first two. Defense and industrial drone capability is well-established, with companies in Germany, Portugal, and the Nordics building serious dual-use platforms. Maritime and underwater robotics is a category where European infrastructure need is acute - North Sea energy assets, rapidly expanding offshore wind, and major port operations all create sustained demand for autonomous inspection and monitoring. Regulatory frameworks for drone operations are also maturing faster in Europe than in many other markets, which is beginning to unlock commercial scale.

A8. Humanoid & General-Purpose Robots

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Humanoids are attracting the most attention in robotics, and warrant the most scrutiny on timelines. The commercial logic is real: a robot that operates in human-designed environments without costly retrofitting has a vast addressable market. Europe's contribution here is grounded in deep research heritage - from Italy's iCub to ETH Zurich's locomotion work - increasingly making its way into commercial products. The near-term opportunity is most likely in structured industrial environments where the form factor advantage is genuine. Full general-purpose capability in unstructured settings remains a longer-horizon problem, and the companies most likely to get there are those with the strongest foundation in manipulation and locomotion research.

A9. Defence, Security & Dual Use

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Defence is one of the verticals where Europe has moved fastest, driven by genuine urgency. Spending has accelerated across the continent, and with it the demand for autonomous surveillance, ISR drones, unmanned ground vehicles, and dual-use platforms that serve both military and civilian markets. The dual-use nature of the underlying technology - perception, edge compute, secure communications - means that defence robotics and civilian robotics share a stack, and founders who understand both markets have a structural advantage. Europe's defence robotics ecosystem is strongest in the Nordics and Baltics, Germany, and the UK, and is attracting increasing institutional capital alongside government procurement.

A10. Mobility & Autonomous Transportation Robotics

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Europe has meaningful technical depth in autonomous vehicle software, and growing deployment in specific mobility contexts: autonomous yard trucks, campus shuttles, port logistics, and sidewalk delivery robots. Full open-road autonomy remains a long-horizon problem, but constrained environments with clear commercial use cases are seeing real traction. EU cross-border regulatory frameworks are beginning to align with deployment ambitions - a meaningful enabler for companies operating across multiple national markets. The most defensible near-term positions are in defined operational domains where the environment is structured enough to make the economics work today.

A11. Science, Research & Laboratory Robotics

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Laboratory automation is a less visible but commercially significant category, with strong European presence. Life science research, drug discovery, and materials science all involve highly repetitive, precision-dependent workflows that are well-suited to robotic automation - and where automation genuinely accelerates outcomes rather than simply reducing cost. The AI-driven lab is an emerging concept: robots that don't just execute predefined protocols but can adapt experimental workflows based on real-time results. Europe's strength in biotech and chemistry research creates natural demand, and the category benefits from shorter sales cycles and clearer ROI than many other application verticals.

A12. Domestic & Consumer Robotics

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Consumer robotics has historically been a difficult commercial category, but the underlying technology is improving faster than ever. Home robots, companion devices, and educational platforms are being revisited with more capable AI, better manipulation, and more realistic price points. Europe's contribution has been strongest in educational robotics and social assistive devices - products designed around genuine human need rather than technical spectacle. The form factor that wins in consumer markets is one that solves a clear daily friction at a price consumers will actually pay, which remains a harder problem than it looks.

Layer B: The Enabling Stack

Every application above depends on a set of underlying capabilities that determine what robots can actually do, how reliably, and at what cost. This is where the foundational innovation happens - and where European technical heritage is deepest. The stack runs from physical hardware at the base to intelligence at the top, with each layer enabling the one above it.

B1. Robotics AI, Models & Agents

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At the top of the enabling stack sits intelligence: foundation models for robotics, spatial AI, perception systems, and the planning and control algorithms that let robots handle real-world complexity. This is where the influence of large language models and vision-language models is being felt most directly in robotics - enabling robots to generalise across tasks rather than being explicitly programmed for each one. It is also where European sovereignty considerations are sharpest. Foundation models trained on industrial data from European factories, with European safety and regulatory standards built in, are a meaningfully different product from those developed elsewhere. The research institutions producing this work - ETH Zurich, TU Munich, INRIA, Oxford - sit at the frontier, and the rate at which that research is converting into commercial products is accelerating.

B2. Simulation, Digital Twins & Dev Tools

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Simulation is increasingly central to how robots are developed and trained. Rather than running every experiment in the real world - expensive, slow, and often dangerous - developers use simulators to test robot behaviour across thousands of scenarios, generate synthetic training data, and validate deployments before they happen. Digital twins of specific environments allow companies to replicate real-world conditions at scale. Europe's gaming and real-time rendering heritage feeds directly into this layer: the same capabilities that built world-class 3D engines are now being repurposed as the development infrastructure for robotics.

B3. Autonomy, Navigation & Localisation

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This layer covers the core capabilities that let robots move intelligently through the world: SLAM (simultaneous localisation and mapping), sensor fusion, motion planning, and fleet autonomy stacks. It's where a significant portion of European robotics IP is concentrated, particularly in vision-based approaches that reduce dependence on expensive infrastructure like GPS or pre-mapped environments. The companies building here often have deep roots in academic research - and the ones that have solved hardware portability and real-time calibration challenges are able to deploy across a much wider range of robot configurations and environments.

B4. Human-Robot Interaction & Interfaces

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As robots move into environments shared with humans, the interfaces between people and machines become increasingly important. This category covers teleoperation systems, XR interfaces (augmented and mixed reality), gesture and voice interaction, and haptic feedback. Europe has particular strength here, with a heritage in display technology, optics, and human-computer interaction research that translates directly into robot interface design. The quality of human-robot interaction is often the determining factor in whether a deployment actually gets used - and used safely.

B5. Robotics Middleware, OS & Infrastructure

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Above the hardware sits the software infrastructure that makes robots operable at scale: robot operating systems, fleet management platforms, cloud and edge robotics infrastructure. This layer matters particularly for European deployments, which frequently span multiple countries, regulatory environments, and languages. Fleet management platforms that coordinate robots across a French warehouse and a German distribution centre, and OS layers that abstract hardware complexity, are the picks and shovels of the robotics buildout - less glamorous than the applications above, but essential to scaling them.

B6. Hardware Components & Subsystems

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At the base of the stack sits hardware: sensors, actuators, end-effectors, power systems, and custom silicon. This is where European optics, photonics, and precision engineering heritage is most directly applicable. LiDAR, vision systems, force-torque sensors, and compliant actuators are all becoming cheaper and more capable - and the companies building robot-native hardware components are often the least visible but most structurally important players in the ecosystem. Cost reduction here is what makes entire application categories commercially viable.

In conclusion, Europe’s robotics startup landscape in 2026 is dynamic and promising, with activity across all layers of the value chain. It offers a fertile hunting ground for investors who share FOV’s vision of the next computing platform being rooted in the physical world, a world where intelligent robots, enabled by spatial computing and AI, augment human productivity in every domain.

Europe has the talent, market demand, and increasingly the capital to build global robotics leaders. With a strong thesis guiding investment (the convergence of spatial computing and robotics) and by leveraging Europe’s collaborative framework, we are confident that the coming years will see many of these startups thrive – delivering returns for investors and strategic value for partners, and quite literally transforming how we live and work through robotics.

Building in any of these areas? We'd love to hear from you - and if you're in London on 25 March, join us at Vantage Point: Robotics Edition, our investor summit and startup showcase for Europe's frontier robotics founders. Register here.

With so much going on in AI each week, you may have missed that NVIDIA's new DreamZero model just crushed robotics benchmarks by doing something novel - teaching robots to predict what will happen before they act.

The model jointly generates both future video and robot actions, essentially letting robots simulate outcomes before moving. This spatial prediction capability has been the missing piece keeping robots confined to controlled environments.

Snapshots from the DreamZero rollout gallery.

That same shift - from map-dependent systems to AI that understands space dynamically - is what just attracted $1.5B to Wayve at an $8.6B valuation. The Cambridge-founded company pioneered what they call "Embodied AI" for autonomous vehicles, using camera-first vision and end-to-end learning instead of expensive sensor stacks and pre-mapped routes. Their cars have been navigating unmapped London streets since 2020. Now, backed by SoftBank, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Uber, they're launching commercial robotaxi trials in 2026.

These are strong signs that the infrastructure layer for physical AI is finally mature.

At FOV, we've been focused on spatial computing technologies for years. Many saw our thesis through the lens of AR/VR consumer applications, but the tech stack we've been building - computational optics, 3D sensing, real-time spatial mapping, depth perception - is now fundamental to physical AI.

Europe has real advantages here, something that makes us very bullish on our thesis over the next decade. Ahead of our Vantage Point event where we're bringing together robotics founders and investor, we wrote about why Europe is positioned to win this wave.

Read more from David Ripert here

FOV NEWS

We're hosting VANTAGE POINT: Robotics Edition on March 25th in London - a curated summit bringing together leading founders, investors, and strategic partners at the frontier of robotics and embodied AI.

First speakers confirmed:

• Troy Estes and Mozghan Kabiri Chimeh, NVIDIA

• Svetlana Grant, Google DeepMind

• William Godfrey, Tangible Finance

• Rory Daniels, techUK

• Robert MacKenzie, Ellipsis

• Kirsty Lloyd-Jukes, Stateful

• Andrei Danescu, Dexory

The half-day program features keynotes, fireside chats, curated startup pitches, and matchmaking sessions designed for signal over noise. We're prioritising thoughtful dialogue, high-quality deal flow, and long-term relationships.

This early registration phase is limited to VCs, LPs, angels, and partners only. Attendance is by approval to maintain a highly curated guest list.

Powered by Venture Café London
For partnership enquiries: sointu@fov.ventures

ICYMI…

We published 10 Early-Stage European Robotics Startups to Watch for 2026 = mostly pre-seed, all deeply technical, building full physical-intelligence stacks from perception to deployment. These teams are moving beyond demos toward systems designed to survive factories, logistics sites, and contested real-world environments.

https://viewpoints.fov.ventures/p/10-early-stage-startups-to-watch-in-2026

FOV Portfolio News

• Edailabs (Emma) achieved the 2nd highest retention rate globally among language learning apps, ahead of apps that have raised tens of millions. The metric validates that their teaching approach is engaging and keeps users coming back consistently. (more here)

• Distance Technologies was featured in Tech.eu discussing how they're building the always-on visual intelligence layer between humans and machines. CEO Urho Konttori describes it as "the operating system for human-AI interaction, enabling intuitive decision-making and making autonomous AI systems safer." (more here)

• Scenario launched Nodes, a new visual workflow engine that lets users build and run processes on one canvas. The node-based system connects models, tools, and assets into pipelines that execute from start to finish. Users can also build custom workflows and publish them as simple apps. Everything runs entirely in the browser - no installs required. (more here)

• GEEIQ was featured in The Business of Fashion for their latest State of Brands in Virtual Worlds data. The analysis shows fashion brands are recalibrating investment in gaming platforms like Roblox and Fortnite. While overall spend pulled back in 2025, integrations rose and brands are focusing on formats that drive repeatable performance. (more here)

• Graswald released AI 2.0, rebuilding their platform to become a core operating system for fashion imagery production.

FOV Job Board

• Levtek - Mechanical Engineer (Malmö, Sweden).

• GEEIQ has multiple positions open in London, UK: Senior QA Engineer, Sales Development Representative, and Senior DevOps Engineer.

• ai|coustics has multiple openings in Berlin, Germany including ML Research Engineer, Backend Developer, Audio Signal Processing Engineer, and Developer Relations roles.

• Atopia Space - SDR / Outbound Sales Freelancer (Remote or Munich, Germany).

• Iconic AI has multiple AI Research positions in London, UK across Expressive Embodiment, Reinforcement Learning, and Model Optimization.

At FOV Ventures, we back the founders building the next era of computing. Europe has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lead this transformation. We’re especially excited right now about frontier tech that touches the real world, where Europe has structural advantages Silicon Valley cannot easily replicate.

This means anything where atoms merge with bits — putting digital intelligence into physical environments, through robotics, mixed reality, computer vision, and autonomous systems. Europe is uniquely positioned to build in this arena.

Europe's industrial DNA now aligns with geopolitical necessity for the first time. Manufacturing heritage meets AI maturity meets sovereign urgency.

Here's why this moment matters.

Sections

• Europe’s Research-to-Real-World Advantage

• Real-World Applications, Real-World Urgency:

  • Industrial settings

  • Agriculture

  • Construction

  • Healthcare

  • Precision and Safety Applications

• Spatial Computing: Europe's Hidden Superpower

• The Case for European Sovereignty

On 25 March 2026, FOV Ventures is bringing together Europe's leading robotics founders, investors, and operators in London for Vantage Point: Robotics Edition — a half-day showcase and summit for the teams building embodied intelligence into the real world. Everything below reflects how we think about where the opportunity is. If you're building in this space, we'd love to see you there.

VANTAGE POINT: LONDON - The Robotics Summit

Robotics is entering its inflection point — join the platform bringing together top founders, investors, partners and labs shaping embodied intelligence in Europe.

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Europe’s Research-to-Real-World Advantage

In the global race for frontier-tech dominance, Europe has found its unfair advantage: a $400 billion startup funnel rooted in its historic universities.

While traditional VC funding has cooled globally, European academic spin-offs are defying the trend - reaching a near-record $9 billion in funding last year and producing 76 ‘centaurs’ and unicorns in 2025 alone.

This is the maturation of a cross-border ecosystem where world-class IP is finally meeting world-class commercial execution.

As a result, research institutions are producing commercial companies at an accelerating pace. Switzerland's ETH Zurich alone produced 46 new spin-off companies in 2025. Germany's TUM set a record with 103 tech start-ups in 2024, and its affiliated incubator UnternehmerTUM was named Europe's top startup hub for the second year running.

These startups are attracting serious capital and corporate buyers too.

ANYbotics AG raised approximately $60M to commercialize its quadruped robots. Sevensense Robotics, an ETH vision-guided robotics spin-off, was acquired by ABB in 2024. While Oxbridge’s research gave birth to WaveOptics (acq by Snap for $500M) and Latent Logic (acq by Waymo in 2019).

University spin-offs now command roughly one-fifth of Europe's deep-tech VC dollars, thanks to strong technical founding teams and protected IP.

This expertise clusters geographically in ways that create compounding advantages. France boasts world-class AI labs (INRIA, Paris-Saclay) spawning leaders like Prophesee and Mistral AI. Switzerland's ETH Zurich produces a steady stream of robotics and computer vision spin-offs, including our portfolio company nunu ai, and has R&D offices from Google, Apple, and NVIDIA.

We've seen it up close in our own portfolio. Flow Computing emerged from VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, founded by researchers alongside a commercial veteran. Flow is building a revolutionary chip architecture to accelerate parallel computing, essential for powering real-time AI in physical systems. 

The ecosystem is also maturing beyond first-time university spin-offs. Experienced founders are launching new ventures with deeper technical expertise and stronger industry networks. Urho Konttori founded Distance Technologies after leading Varjo's world-class VR development. Harri Valpola launched System 2 AI after selling Curious AI and spending three years at Apple. This pattern creates companies with better technical foundations and clearer commercial strategies.

Now, European startups are building across the deep tech stack for virtually every sector, solving real-world problems in factories, warehouses, hospitals, farms, and households.

Real-World Applications, Real-World Urgency:

The true test of a technological revolution isn't how it performs in a clean room, but how it handles a construction site, a hospital ward, or a battlefield. Europe’s competitive edge in robotics stems from its status as the world’s 'living laboratory' - a diverse landscape of asset-heavy industries hungry for automation. By grounding AI in the messy reality of the physical world, European startups are moving beyond the novelty of humanoid research to solve the urgent demographic and labor crises of the next decade.

Industrial settings

Startups develop robots and automation aiming to make manufacturing more flexible or to assist human workers on the factory floor. Europe's strong manufacturing base and research in industrial automation have spawned many ventures in collaborative robots (cobots) and robotic cells for SMEs.

Take our portfolio company Makiina, pioneering modular, low-cost, AI-driven robotic systems built from scratch in Finland. Designed to learn tasks through human demonstration, they make adaptable automation viable far beyond factory floors.

Makiina

Agriculture

Agriculture faces similar pressure from farm labor shortages and demands for sustainable practices. European startups build robots for planting, crop care, harvesting, and farm management. Europe's mix of large industrial farms and smaller specialty farms provides a testing ground for field robotics such as weeding machines, harvesters for fruits and vegetables, and drones or rovers for monitoring crops.

Many agri-robotics startups emphasize environmental benefits like precision weeding to reduce pesticide use. Our portfolio company Spogen is building a voice and vision-guided co-pilot that helps operators interact with complex machinery like tractors using natural language. Think Alexa running on diesel with steel tracks.

Construction

Construction has been relatively late to automation, but European startups are emerging to tackle heavy labor tasks and productivity issues. These companies build robots for construction sites, including robotic systems for on-site material handling, automated construction processes, and surveying and monitoring. Europe's construction robotics scene is nascent but growing, often leveraging partnerships with construction firms.

Healthcare

Healthcare faces demographic realities including aging populations and staff shortages that make robotic solutions urgent. Europe is home to several leading medical robotics startups, particularly in surgical robotics and rehabilitation.

The continent has produced notable challengers to Intuitive Surgical's dominant da Vinci system, including Switzerland's LEM Surgical and UK-based CMR Surgical with their Versius system. Focus areas include minimally invasive surgical assistants, robotic endoscopy, prosthetics and exoskeletons, and micro-robots for targeted therapies.

Precision and Safety Applications

Defence represents another area where Europe's deep tech edge matters for both national security and dual-use innovation that spills into civilian industry. Portfolio company Distance Technologies shows how this works. Founded by two Nokia veterans who previously built Varjo into a leader in enterprise and defence-focused VR headsets, they recognised the hardware barrier preventing mass adoption. They're now combining hardware, software, and AI to create light fields and images that appear naturally within your field of view at correct depth and distance in the real world. Their technology serves both automotive and defence markets, appearing on car windshields or in fighter jets. Europe needs more dual-use startups that thread the needle between national resilience and commercial scale.

Distance Technologies

Beyond these vertical applications, heavy investment flows toward general-purpose humanoid robots with human-like form factors (bipedal legs, arms, torso, head). Europe has a legacy of humanoid robotics research, including Italy's iCub open-source humanoid and NASA and ESA collaborations. A few startups are now pushing toward commercial humanoids, including 1X originally from Norway.

These applications across robotics share a fundamental requirement. Machines need to understand space, depth, and physical context. That brings us to Europe's second structural advantage in spatial computing.

Spatial Computing: Europe's Hidden Superpower

We are moving past the era of looking at data on screens to an era where humans and machines inhabit the same space.

The "engine room" of this revolution is firmly rooted in Europe. The continent has spent decades perfecting the core disciplines - optics, photonics, and real-time rendering - long before "spatial computing" was a buzzword.

This technical foundation wasn't built for headsets, but it trickled down from Helsinki’s gaming studios, Swiss optics labs, and the telecommunications labs of Nokia and Ericsson. Today, that DNA powers the entire spatial stack. Real-time 3D games engines like Unity and Unreal, have been repurposed as the operating systems for reality. They now run the simulations for our military, the training grounds for our robots, and the "digital twins" of our autonomous vehicles.

These engines have transitioned from entertainment tools to the essential infrastructure for understanding physical space.

As these simulated environments become more complex, the industry bottleneck has shifted from simply building 3D worlds to capturing the existing world at scale. European innovators are breaking this barrier through breakthroughs like Gaussian splatting and image diffusion, with companies like M-XR and Graswald making high-fidelity 3D content generation near-instant and hyper-realistic.

However, capturing reality only matters if the hardware is practical enough for everyday use.

This is where European startups are solving the "physics problems" of miniaturisation, with Kubos Semiconductor reinventing microLEDs for efficiency and IXI perfecting electronically tuneable lenses that mimic the human eye’s natural focus.

The strategic value of this talent has triggered a global acquisition wave; in the lead-up to the 2024 Vision Pro launch, nearly half of Apple’s targeted acquisitions were European-based, while Snap’s $500M purchase of WaveOptics underscored the region's dominance in waveguide technology.

We are now witnessing a sophisticated "third wave" of innovation as veterans from Nokia and Varjo spin out new ventures like defence tech, Distance Technologies, and $11B valued Oura, with Europe’s heritage in optics and computer vision the indispensable substrate for the next interface layer of computing.

The Case for European Sovereignty

This concentration of high-value expertise is shifting the conversation around European technological sovereignty from a philosophical debate into a practical strategy for owning a digital destiny.

Reducing the long-standing reliance on foreign cloud providers and hardware manufacturers allows Europe to build homegrown capabilities that reflect its own industrial standards. This transition ensures that the critical technologies shaping the future stay rooted in local values while maintaining control over essential data and infrastructure. There is a massive opportunity to lead in the field of physical AI by defining the core principles of the industry alongside the products themselves.

Take drone motors and actuators. Chinese firms control 70-90% of the global commercial drone market, and European defence forces are acutely aware of the dependency (up to 70% of components in Ukrainian battlefield drones come from Chinese suppliers). European-made alternatives exist but typically cost 10x more, making reshoring economically unviable. Our Portfolio company Makiina is building drone motors and actuators entirely in-house in Finland, producing dual-arm robotic systems for under $1,200 with motors that early benchmarking suggests match Chinese alternatives on both torque and cost. If those economics hold at scale, more than just sovereign supply chains - it's a platform for truly European robots, built with European parts, designed for European deployment.

The current policy landscape offers a unique advantage for this transition. European AI regulation provides a stable framework that actually favours industrial innovation. Because physical AI relies on sensor data from factories and warehouses rather than sensitive consumer information, it naturally avoids many common privacy hurdles. This allows developers to focus on safety and interoperability without the friction typically associated with personal data. A company can innovate within a logistics hub or a manufacturing plant while staying perfectly aligned with existing standards.

Public funding and institutional support are now accelerating these efforts through high-impact initiatives. New cross-border testbeds for autonomous drones and digital hubs for robotics are helping to de-risk early deployments for startups. These efforts are further supported by the introduction of EU Inc, a transformative legal framework that allows startups to scale across the entire bloc under a single company structure. This system removes the administrative complexity that historically fragmented the European market and slowed down the growth of deep tech firms.

The practical impact of this structural shift is significant for any company dealing with physical hardware. A robotics startup can now test machines in German factories and deploy software in French warehouses while hiring research talent in Poland through one legal entity. This streamlined approach simplifies investment structures and speeds up cross-border growth by harmonising operations across the single market. These changes are creating a clear path for a new generation of sovereign tech giants to rise from the lab and compete on the global stage.

We believe this is the most exciting time to back European deep tech founders in decades, because the convergence is here (areas once considered futuristic like AI, robotics and spatial computing are reaching maturity together), because the urgency is real, and because the infrastructure is catching up. Europe has a clear edge through engineering depth, industrial heritage and cross-border collaboration, and this is finally aligned with what the world needs most to reap real-world benefits from AI: intelligence in the physical world.

At FOV Ventures, that’s the bet we’re making. Not just on technology, but on people. Founders who want to build hard things, with long-term impact, in the places they know best.

If you’re one of them, let’s talk.

If you're building in any of these areas, we'd love to see you in London on 25 March. Vantage Point: Robotics Edition is our investor summit and startup showcase for Europe's frontier robotics founders.

VANTAGE POINT: LONDON - The Robotics Summit

Robotics is entering its inflection point — join the platform bringing together top founders, investors, partners and labs shaping embodied intelligence in Europe.

vantage.fov.ventures

Welcome to Viewpoints, news and investment activity covering the next era of computing - brought to you by FOV Ventures.

This Month:

• Six Shifts Shaping 2026: Our investment themes

• 10 European robotics startups to watch at the pre-seed stage

• Vantage Point: Robotics Edition coming to London in March

Dave Haynes, Petri Rajahalme, Sointu Karjalainen & David Ripert (FOV Ventures)

At FOV, we've been persistently focused on a set of truly transformative technologies that seemed like science fiction just a few years ago - AI, robotics, and spatial computing. Now they're simultaneously reaching maturity and creating massive new opportunities.

Physical AI and robotics have shifted from theoretical possibilities to practical realities. We've moved from the "wow" phase of seeing a robot walk to the "how" phase of making it industrial-grade. The frontier tech of yesterday is becoming the infrastructure of today.

We just published our investment focus for 2026 across these key themes. While some areas race ahead with major leaps arriving weekly, others are recalibrating and moving away from the hype machine toward real deployments.

https://viewpoints.fov.ventures/p/six-shifts-shaping-2026

Robotics and physical AI is one of the natural evolutions of our long-held thesis - the shrinking gap between the digital and physical realms, and the application of AI beyond our 2D screens (and chat windows).

As we outlined in the piece above, robotics in 2025 saw VC investment rebound sharply - but the majority of capital went into the same three ideas: robot brains, robot training, and humanoids.

Now, as foundation models commoditise, alpha has moved to the fringe — incl. vertical-focused solutions solving specific problems exceptionally well.

Europe's robotics renaissance in these areas is being built in small teams, early labs, and first production pilots across the continent. While most attention flows to later-stage humanoids, the next breakout companies are forming much earlier - at pre-seed, where new architectures and software stacks are still fluid.

We're deep in this space, so we wanted to spotlight what we're seeing on the ground. We published 10 Early-Stage European Robotics Startups to Watch for 2026 = mostly pre-seed, all deeply technical, building full physical-intelligence stacks from perception to deployment. These teams are moving beyond demos toward systems designed to survive factories, logistics sites, and contested real-world environments.

https://viewpoints.fov.ventures/p/10-early-stage-startups-to-watch-in-2026

FOV NEWS

VANTAGE POINT: Robotics Edition 2026

We're hosting VANTAGE POINT: Robotics Edition on March 25th in London - a curated summit bringing together leading founders, investors, and strategic partners at the frontier of robotics and embodied AI.

The half-day program features keynotes, fireside chats, curated startup pitches, and matchmaking sessions designed for signal over noise. We're prioritising thoughtful dialogue, high-quality deal flow, and long-term relationships.

This early registration phase is limited to VCs, LPs, angels, and partners only. Attendance is by approval to maintain a highly curated guest list.

Powered by Venture Café London.

For partnership enquiries: sointu@fov.ventures

FOV PORTFOLIO NEWS

• Doublepoint announced two major products at CES 2026: a $249 developer kit with partners STMicroelectronics, ams OSRAM, and Ambiq (available for pre-order now), and WowPlay, a consumer-ready WearOS app for everyday music and media control. (more)

• M-XR introduced Marso AI, a game-ready asset platform that generates production-grade PBR textures from any 3D model, powered by their foundational model trained with PBR data from Marso Measure - built with technical artists to deliver a full game-ready asset workflow. (more)

• Graswald continued their strong 2025 momentum, becoming a critical workflow tool in fashion as they work toward a true operating system for fashion that supports brands from early creative ideation to final publish-ready assets. (more)

• GEEIQ launches The State of Brands in Virtual Worlds 2026, a report mapping how brands actually operate across gaming and virtual platforms based on observed behavior, not opinion—register to receive it first when it launches next week. (more)

• Distance Technologies unveiled the Field Operator HUD—a lightweight, glasses-free XR system that integrates with existing soldier helmets to give defense vehicle operators the same tactical advantage as advanced fighter-pilot helmets. (more)

• nunu.ai launched PR Testing Agents, enabling fully autonomous end-to-end tests directly inside GitHub Pull Requests that interact with products like real users—reaching 85% issue detection compared to 30% with traditional PR bots, solving the QA bottleneck as AI coding tools accelerate development. (more)

• IXI signed a letter of intent with Atol and Vizio, two leading optical groups representing 3,000+ stores in France, to explore commercial pilots for their autofocus eyewear and jointly develop the optical retail experience around how opticians can best introduce autofocus technology. (more)

FOV JOB BOARD

Open Roles at Portfolio Companies:

• AI Coustics is hiring across their Berlin team with 10 roles spanning Systems Software Engineer (Rust), Developer Relations, Audio ML Data Engineer, Backend Developer, Digital Audio Signal Processing Engineer, Audio Data Infrastructure Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, ML PhD Internship, Junior IT Operations Engineer, and ML Research Engineer. (apply)

• Spogen.ai has a QA & Data Specialist position (Entry Level, €2,500-4k/month) open across Oregon, Atlanta, and Bucaramanga, Colombia. (apply)

• Pixieray is seeking a Digital Channels & Growth Manager (Mid-Senior Level) across Espoo (Finland), Washington DC, and Lehi (Utah). (apply)

• GEEIQ is hiring an Account Executive (Mid-Senior Level) in London, UK. (apply)

• Levtek has a Senior Mechanical Engineer position open in Malmö, Sweden. (apply)

• Atopia Space is seeking an SDR / Outbound Sales Freelancer (Entry Level, Remote or Munich). (apply)

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again… but with fresh eyes for 2026.

As Amara's Law reminds us, human nature tends to overestimate the impact of technology in the short term but underestimate it in the long term. The constant buzz of fleeting tech trends will come and go. But at FOV Ventures we’ve been persistently focused on a set of truly transformative technologies that have been unfolding gradually and are now converging to take us into a new era of computing.

Areas like AI, robotics, and spatial computing - that to many seemed like science fiction just a few years ago - are simultaneously reaching maturity and creating huge new opportunities. This is something we went even deeper on last year, publishing our first physical book on the subject (grab your free digital copy here)

While some of our focus areas have been steady companions for years, evolving in expected ways, others have accelerated dramatically. Physical AI and robotics, for example, have shifted from theoretical possibilities to practical realities. And other building blocks - from AI and computer vision to mixed reality and edge computing - are finally clicking into place.

The rapidly shrinking gap between digital and physical realms has long been our investment thesis and in 2026, the signals are even stronger.

We've moved from the "wow" phase of seeing a robot walk, to the "how" phase of making it an industrial-grade reality. The "frontier" tech of yesterday is becoming the infrastructure of today, and whilst some areas race ahead with major leaps seemingly arriving weekly rather than yearly - other areas are recalibrating and moving further away from the headline hunting hype machine of today’s tech industry.

So let’s revisit some of the key themes from last year and look at how they’ve evolved, the nuance we’re seeing on the ground, and how we might be allocating our capital this year.

If you are working on a startup, or investing yourself across any of these themes we would love to hear from you! Reach out on LinkedIn and submit details here 

1. Smart Glasses: the most human interface for AI

Last year we predicted: Smart glasses would emerge as "the most human interface for AI."

What happened: We were right about the trajectory, but the winning insight was simpler than expected - smart glasses aren't just "phones for your face." They're "eyes for your AI." The value today is the AI's ability to see your life and provide proactive utility.

We made new investments in this category in 2025 and will continue proactively looking for opportunities. It remains early in the cycle, so we're interested in B2B opportunities while asking when and how main players will open to 3rd party developers - and what enablers still need building.

As Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth noted, the form-factor's AI capabilities proved key in driving consumer adoption of this new wearable category. Ray-Bans validated the core assumption - people will buy tech-enabled sunglasses - de-risking the path to Meta's north star: Project Orion (full AR glasses).

Orion AI glasses: The future of AR glasses technology | Meta

A decade in the making, recent groundbreaking innovations from Meta with Orion redefine what is possible for AR, AI and beyond.

www.meta.com/en-gb/emerging-tech/orion/?srsltid=AfmBOoqS2_QvQ44zOZ4wzGVuzhq3gj7I421_cB79QnHNNGxoSc4yQmXL

They took a key step in 2025 with Meta Rayban Displays, which adds wrist-powered control and a subtle heads-up layer to everyday vision - surfacing photos, messages, and AI prompts without breaking eye contact with the real world.

Google - having announced AndroidXR and partnerships with Xreal, Warby Parker, Gentle Monster, and Samsung, plus impressing with Gemini's multimodal and memory capabilities - will be a key player in 2026. While CES witnessed a "war of hundreds of smart glasses," the other key players we're watching are Snap (next-gen Spectacles) and Apple (most likely 2027).

But as the category matures, what can startups build that Meta, Samsung, and Apple can't…

Innovation is still needed at the infrastructure level from startups that walk the fine line between true technical innovation, large customer demands, and commercial potential (e.g., WaveOptics sold to Snap for $500M).

A growing list of startups have clearly defined wedges - something in either hardware or OS that makes them competitive as AR/AI wearable emerges for mass consumers. Metra is building an open-source operating system for glasses. Raven focuses on eye-tracking HUD.

At the application level, the opportunity remains nascent and undefined, especially in consumer. We're watching closely while looking at opportunities in environments where users are paid to wear glasses and specialised AI assistants provide workers with productivity, safety, or decision-making boosts.

Our own investment, Spogen, leverages smart glasses + augmented intelligence for operators of heavy machinery. Startups like Syn2Core develop AI co-pilots for frontline automotive workers to minimise human errors. Many opportunities will emerge.

2. Voice AI: more interactions beyond the chat window

Last year we predicted: Voice would help AI break free from the 2D chat window, with LLMs entering the physical world through ambient interfaces.

What happened: We were right about voice emerging as a key interaction layer for both on-device and wearable AI, confirming the chat window isn't the be-all and end-all. For investors, it became a huge category in its own right - startups tackling everything from new wearables and vertical applications to the more critical infrastructure and tooling (like our portfolio company AIcoustics).

But reliability and context-awareness limited how autonomous these systems could be in practice. Vertical-specific solutions consistently outperformed general-purpose assistants. Consumers showed limited tolerance for poorly contextualised or overly proactive AI behaviour.

The "life-log" hype of 2025 faded. The truth many realised is that most of life isn't worth recording, so many always-on wearables will struggle with PMF, likely replaced by vertical-specific solutions.

The next interface likely isn’t "AI recording everything" but ambient AI operating in constrained domains.

3. Physical AI: from buzzword to infrastructure

Last year we predicted: "Physical AI" would become the new buzzword as world simulation became AI's next grand challenge.

What happened: We were right about the buzzword - Google announced a new team to work on AI models that simulate the physical world, NVIDIA unveiled Cosmos trained on 20 million hours of video, and the funding frenzy followed. General Intuition secured one of the largest seed rounds ever at $133.7M in November, Field AI hit a $2B valuation, renowned AI scientist Yann LeCun launched Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI) in December, reportedly seeking over $5 billion and just last week, Skild AI raised a $1.4 billion Series C led by SoftBank.

But in 2026, the first-mover advantage for general-purpose "robot brains" evaporated. With foundation models from NVIDIA, Physical Intelligence, and OpenAI becoming ubiquitous, a robot's ability to "see and move" might just be a commodity you buy via an API.

Twitter tweet

Because the "brain" is now a commodity, alpha has moved to whoever can deploy, maintain, and scale hardware most efficiently.

The companies best positioned might not just be the ones raising $1B+ for world models - they'll include industrial incumbents with existing manufacturing footprints. For example, FANUC does $6B annually in robotic arms and ABB's robotics division did $2.4B in 2024, both these companies already have the supply chains, customers, and distribution. When they can license a “better” model from Nvidia or Google, their existing advantages compound.

4. Robotics: now riding the next wave

Last year we predicted: A new wave of robotics startups would lead to a surge in investor interest.

What happened: We were right - VC investment rebounded sharply, with notable rounds including Figure AI ($1B+ Series C), Apptronik ($403M Series A), and OpenAI-backed 1X entered talks in September 2025 to raise up to $1 billion dollars.

However, in 2025, the majority of capital deployed went into the same three ideas: robot brain, robot training, and humanoids. But as the foundational models discussed above commoditise, alpha moved to the fringe.

At FOV, we made our first forays into robotics with two, so-far unannounced, rounds.

We see that many of the most successful deployments are still vertical-focused. Soft-robotic grippers for agriculture; Quadruped inspectors for oil rigs like Anybotics; Modular appendage-only AI for surgical bays. The robots currently making money solve highly specific tasks in environments where reliability beats generality enough times.

Twitter tweet

We're also seeing more deployments than ever before, particularly in China where manufacturers are moving aggressively into industrial robots, humanoids, and autonomous systems at scale. This has triggered increased Western focus on manufacturing sovereignty and supply chain resilience, driving more capital into domestic robotics - particularly for defence applications.

5. VR & Mixed Reality: a year to recalibrate

Last year we predicted: VR's long march to mainstream adoption would continue through mixed reality, shaped by platform competition between Apple and Meta.

What happened: The march continued, but several setbacks signal a wintry year for VR - best categorised as a year of transition rather than category death. The mainstream narrative has cooled.

We didn't make any new VR investments in 2025 and will look at new opportunities very selectively.

As predicted, Vision Pro only got minor upgrades, with a next-gen (or cheaper) model unlikely until 2027. Google re-entered with AndroidXR powering a new Samsung headset, but it wasn't the game-changer hoped for. Meta just announced layoffs in Reality Labs content teams - a necessary reset after overpriming the pump.

The press narrative that "Meta is abandoning VR for AI" is overstated. Content spend is slowing, not usage. Anecdotally, VR engagement rose again over the holiday period and we predict Meta will expand the Quest ecosystem with a lighter headset later this year for broader lean-back audiences. Valve's 'Steam Frame' headset set for 2026 release should also do for VR what Steam Deck did for handhelds, solidifying the core gaming audience.

But there's two massive undercurrents:

First, top-decile indie studios are printing money. Several, off the back of Gorilla Tag’s success, are nearing $100M in revenue and 10M players with their playbook of low-budget viral game mechanics that attract social media native audiences. Any new startups in this space need to prove they can develop products and iterate quickly with lean teams, leveraging social media to build community and user acquisition without over-relying on platform support.

Second, VR teleoperation is becoming a real business. Across hospitals, factories, and logistics hubs, humans increasingly "possess" robots via headsets to resolve edge cases. One operator supervises dozens of machines. Surgeons work remotely. Hazardous maintenance avoids human entry. Autonomous vehicles hand off complex maneuvers to remote pilots.

Platforms like Formant (Series B) and Viam (Series C) provide the fleet backbone. While startups like Extend and Sunday Robotics push low-latency control and learning at scale. This is becoming a high-ROI way to extend human skill across distance, risk, and labor constraints - while gathering valuable data for generalized AI models that take us closer to full automation.

6. Gaming Tech: underpinning the simulation stack

Last year we predicted: Gaming tech would expand beyond entertainment into core infrastructure.

What happened: We were right, but the shift was even more fundamental than expected. In 2025, we saw a "Simulation-First" approach solidify across every major sector. Anduril leverages game engines for high-stakes defence simulations (their first acquisition was a gaming company). Tesla creates virtual worlds to stress-test autonomous systems before they hit the road. Beyond heavy industry, BMW normalised AR in heads-up displays, and Matterport turned 3D walkthroughs from a luxury into a real estate standard.

The bottleneck shifted. It's no longer the engine itself - but the accessibility of content creation and data capture.

AI-powered creation tools like FOV portfolio companies Scenario and Move.ai are already being adopted by game studios as first movers to push creative boundaries. Meanwhile, 3D capture pipelines improved rapidly through techniques like gaussian splatting and image diffusion models, making it exponentially easier to scan assets and generate environments. FOV portfolio company M-XR exemplifies this shift, while companies like Graswald and Aino apply these techniques to unlock e-commerce and other verticals.

The final piece of gaming's move into industry is AI NPCs using autonomous agents and LLMs, creating sophisticated applications from soft skills training to healthcare to collaborative learning.

If you're building in any of these areas, we'd love to hear from you. While this list captures our current thinking, we're always excited to be proven wrong by founders seeing around corners we haven't yet turned. And no doubt we’ll continue to revisit this piece through the year.

Get in touch at www.fov.ventures 

Europe’s robotics renaissance is in full swing, being built in small teams, early labs, and first production pilots across the continent. While most attention still flows to later-stage humanoids, foundation models, and defence primes, the next breakout robotics companies are forming much earlier, at pre-seed, where new architectures, software stacks, and manufacturing approaches are still fluid.

This list highlights 10 early-stage European robotics startups to watch for 2026 - mostly pre-seed, all deeply technical, and all ultimately enabling us to tackle hard problems in the real world. These teams are building robots, full physical-intelligence stacks spanning perception, control, simulation, learning, and deployment, tightly coupled to real operational use cases.

Across mobility, manipulation, autonomy, and embodied AI, they are raising capital to move beyond pitch decks and demos, toward systems designed to survive factories, facilities, logistics sites, and even contested real-world environments. 

Some are still emerging from stealth, others already in pilots, but each represents a credible attempt to make robots genuinely useful at scale - and to redefine what European robotics can become over the next decade.

Note: this is far from a definitive list, and for this post we’ve focused only on some of the really early stage companies that crossed our path in 2025. We’ll be doing a follow-up post soon with those startups that have raised larger seed or Series A rounds. If you would like to be included, or nominate a company, reach out here.

And In March 2026, we're bringing this ecosystem together at Vantage Point: Robotics Edition in London - a curated investor summit + demo day that will connect Europe's most promising robotics founders with investors and other industry leaders.

Investors and startups request your spot below…

Vantage Point: Robotics 2026

Robotics is entering its inflection point — join the platform bringing together top founders, investors, partners and labs shaping embodied intelligence in Europe.

vantage.fov.ventures

1. MAKIINA — Finland

Building the hardware and software stack for physical intelligence: modular, low-cost, scalable, and made in Finland. From drone motors and actuators to power electronics, sensor units, and a breakthrough AI robotics foundation model, each piece is built like LEGO blocks that fit together into different form factors of physical AI agents, affordably and at scale.

MAKIINA developed methods to produce dual robotic arm systems for under $1,200 all in-house, while iterating on hardware at software speed. Their robots learn tasks through human demonstration rather than rigid programming, handling "fuzzy" processes that traditional robots can't.

Stage: Seed | Founded: 2024 | Amount Raised: Not disclosed

2. Levtek — Sweden

Democratising automation through "software-defined" ultralight electric vehicles and collaborative robots. Their flagship product, the Levkart, is an autonomous electric utility vehicle designed to work alongside humans in shared workspaces like warehouses and industrial sites.

Levtek focuses on cognitive robotics - building "ride-on" robots that can reason, learn, and adapt to their environments. They've partnered with PostNord (Swedish national postal service) for logistics trials and collaborate with Malmö and Lund Universities on machine learning and human-robot interaction research.

Stage: Seed | Founded: 2023 | Amount Raised: €2.25m

3. Mimic — Switzerland

Deploying frontier physical AI across industries with AI-driven dexterous robotic hands paired with proven, off-the-shelf robot arms. "Humanoids are exciting, but there aren't many industrial scenarios where the full-body form factor truly adds value," says Co-founder Stephan-Daniel Gravert. "Our approach delivers the same capabilities in a way that is much simpler, more reliable and rapidly deployable."

Founded in 2024 as an ETH Zurich spin-off by Stefan Weirich, Stephan-Daniel Gravert, Elvis Nava, Benedek Forrai, and Robert Katzschmann, Mimic brings together a multidisciplinary team of 25 engineers developing an AI foundation model and humanoid robotic hands that make human-level dexterity deployable across industries.

Stage: Seed | Founded: 2024 | Amount Raised: €17m(€13.8m in latest round led by Elaia, alongside Speedinvest)

4. Paddington Robotics — UK

Founded in 2024 by Zehan Wang, who previously founded Magic Pony before exiting to Twitter, Paddington Robotics are building robots that help people do more. Starting in supermarkets and grocery stores, Paddington's robots are designed to lighten the load for staff working long, labor-intensive hours - boosting productivity and enabling them to do more with less effort.

Twitter tweet

"It may not be as flashy as kung-fu fighting or backflipping humanoids, but we are building for real-world impact, not just building tech for technology's sake." - Zeha Wang.

Stage: Pre-Seed | Founded: 2024

5. Loki Robotics — Switzerland

Building the autonomous backbone of facility operations. Loki is engineered to master one of the most complex physical tasks in robotics: cleaning like a person. The first robot designed to handle high-contact, high-variation environments - swapping tools, applying cleaning agents with precision, and physically interacting with fixtures and objects.

Twitter tweet

From deep overnight restroom cleaning to continuous day porter routines, Loki adapts to facility demands. "We spend over a year of our lives doing chores - time that could be spent raising kids, calling grandparents, making music, building things," says the team. At the core, they combine end-to-end learning with teleoperation to drastically shorten deployment time and unlock real-world capability fast.

Stage: Pre-Seed | Founded: 2024

6. Qualia — Denmark

Building the infrastructure layer for robotics AI. Qualia provides a platform for training and deploying VLA (Vision-Language-Action) models - foundation models that allow robots to reason about their surroundings using visual and text input, then execute physical tasks.

Twitter tweet

Their platform simplifies the complex workflow of training embodied AI with tools for data processing, model fine-tuning, and rapid iteration. Supporting leading VLA models like Pi 0.5, SmolVLA, and Gr00t 1.5, Qualia targets robotics engineers who need to iterate quickly, hardware companies adding AI reasoning via API, and foundation model labs distributing to a wider ecosystem.

Stage: Pre-Seed | Founded: 2025

7. Saturn Dynamics — UK

Saturn is developing the first world model as a virtual simulator, powered by a physics-aware generative engine. Prompt Saturn to generate and control simulations, reducing friction with your tech stack and lowering the time-to-market. Saturn takes in multimodal sensor data, state data, and text, to produce video annotated with world-state data.

Saturn aims to become the foundational simulator behind the autonomous systems that will shape our world in the coming years - powering every step from early-stage training to real-time decision-making when deployed in the real world.

Stage: Pre-Seed | Founded: 2025

8. Voyage Robotics — London

Building the world's first neural safety system for Physical AI-powered robots and vehicles, alongside humanlike AI controls for robots to automate any task. Committed to open-source robotics and partnering with other robotics and embodied AI builders to develop common, modular standards and platforms. The team is comfortable working with both software and hardware, aiming to build their own robot workers while helping others build theirs using Voyage's technology.

Stage: Pre-Seed | Founded: 2024

9. Kova Labs — Finland

Developing embodied intelligence for the next generation of unmanned systems in defence and national security.

Kova Labs builds the "brain" of autonomous hardware, giving machines a real-time understanding of the physical world to perceive, navigate, and act autonomously in complex and contested environments (where GPS might be jammed or communication restricted). Their technology processes complex spatial data like point clouds for 3D mapping, helping robots understand difficult terrains including forest environments. Backed by Lifeline Ventures and angels, they're modernising how unmanned systems operate in high-stakes defence applications.

Stage: Pre-Seed | Founded: 2025

10. Sunrise Robotics — Slovenia

Sunrise Robotics revolutionises manufacturing with intelligent, autonomous robotic cells that enhance flexibility, scalability, and efficiency.

Stage: Seed | Founded: 2023 | Amount Raised: $8.5M

From Helsinki to Zurich, London to Copenhagen, technical founders are building the physical intelligence stack that will define the next decade of automation - and they're doing it earlier, leaner, and faster than ever before.

These ten companies represent just the beginning.

If you're building in this space, or backing those who are, we want to meet you.

Vantage Point: Robotics March 2026

Robotics is entering its inflection point — join the platform bringing together top founders, investors, partners and labs shaping embodied intelligence in Europe.

vantage.fov.ventures

A curated investor summit and demo day connecting Europe's most promising robotics founders with the investors and industry leaders shaping embodied intelligence.

Request your spot: vantage.fov.ventures

Welcome to Viewpoints, news and investment activity covering the next generation of computing - brought to you by FOV Ventures.

This Month:

• Our Slush Recap

• What is Gaussian Splatting and why you should pay attention now

• Portfolio wins: Roro's €2.7M seed, IXI's 22g prototype, and more!

Dave Haynes, Petri Rajahalme, Sointu Karjalainen & David Ripert (FOV Ventures)

This was hands down our biggest Slush yet. We led with our annual pre-slush Minus One event with Google and KPMG - bringing our portfolio together for dinner before bringing in over 250 more investors and founders into our wonderful venue at Allas Sea Pool.

We also organised and hosted an excellent Female LP side event (more on that below) and collaborated with OpenAI’s Wulfie Bain and Alice Guo for an intimate session with a curated group of technical founders. Between that and our invitation to the exclusive Slush launch of Gemini 3 we were blown away by the accelerating pace of new AI capabilities and the fact that Helsinki was at the centre of that for European startups, during the conference.

Another big topic this year, even dominating on Slush’s main stage, was defence tech. European defence startups raised $4.2 billion in the first nine months of 2025, putting the year on track for record investment.

For us, the defence opportunity sits squarely at the intersection of our core thesis: spatial computing technologies that enable machines to see, understand, and act in the physical world have obvious dual-use applications. More on that here.

Case in point: our portfolio company Distance Technologies brought their XR Night Vision system to Slush - military-grade optics that fuse lidar, infrared, and thermal data into 3D displays. The demo drew serious attention from both contractors and commercial players, along with serval other interesting robotics displays.

Both defence and robotics applications share the same fundamental requirement: high-fidelity 3D representations of the physical world. Whether it's a military vehicle operator navigating at night or a robot manipulating objects in a warehouse, these systems need to understand spatial relationships with precision and speed that traditional 3D modelling simply can't deliver.

Which brings us to two announcements that Meta made last week -

• First, SAM 3D - AI that takes any 2D image and reconstructs it in 3D with accurate geometry, texture, and pose. They're already shipping it in Facebook Marketplace so you can preview furniture in your room before buying.

• Second, Meta Hyperscape, which lets you create photorealistic 3D replicas of real spaces using just a Quest 3, then share and explore them with up to 8 people simultaneously.

Meta’s Hyperscape Capture

3D capture has been a core part of our investment thesis for years. We see it as essential infrastructure for spatial computing - whether that's training AI systems to understand physical environments, enabling defence applications like Distance's system, or powering the next generation of robotics.

One of the key breakthroughs making scalable 3D capture possible is Gaussian Splatting, a family of AI techniques that can reconstruct photorealistic 3D from ordinary photos or video, delivering the speed and fidelity required to finally bridge the digital-physical divide.

We caught up with Michael Rubloff of RadianceFields.com to understand why this matters now, where the opportunities are, and how this unlocks the infrastructure layer for spatial computing and physical AI.

Full piece with Michael Rubloff here.

FOV NEWS

A new robotics movement is forming…

Something significant is coming. We’re not announcing full details yet — but those driving the next era of robotics in Europe will want a front-row seat. If robotics is part of your future…

Making the Invisible Visible: The Female LP Pathways Survey

Mid-week at Slush, our Female LP Side Event drew 150+ attendees with Anisah Osman Britton MBE moderating a powerful panel on pathways into LP investing. The conversations proved there's a real appetite and economic imperative for bringing more women into venture.

Our part in this is launching The Female LP Pathways Survey - the first Europe-wide study mapping how women invest in venture capital, the barriers they face, and what could unlock the next wave of female LPs.

This 6-10 minute anonymous survey invites all women in Europe interested in venture — from seasoned investors to those simply curious — to share their story.

Every response feeds into a transparent, open-access dataset publishing in 2026, available to funds, LPs, networks, and policymakers.

In collaboration with Tesi, unlock VC, Ada Ventures, Kvanted, and many more partners, we're building a shared resource the whole ecosystem can use.

Change starts with visibility. When we make the invisible visible, we make it possible for thousands more to join.

Read the full piece: 

Making the Invisible Visible: The Women Behind Europe’s Venture Capital Flows

The Female LP Pathways Survey launches to uncover the journeys, barriers, and opportunities for women in venture.

viewpoints.fov.ventures/p/making-the-invisible-visible-the-women-behind-europe-s-venture-capital-flows

FOV PORTFOLIO NEWS

• Roro raised €2.7M seed led by Behold Ventures, node.vc, and 1Up Ventures to build Hello Home, the first true 3D digital dollhouse launching next year, bringing gaming as the new social to an expanding demographic looking to create and connect through self-expression—the team is hiring to build little homes with big dreams. (more)

• Spogen ai was selected as Startup Winner of the Tuottava Idea 2025 competition, earning recognition on the Nasdaq Times Square billboard and the honor of ringing the Nasdaq bell in Helsinki. (more)

• Scenario partnered with Alan, a leading HealthTech company with over one million members, enabling them to produce 10× more on-brand content across image, video, and 3D—including 27,000 personalized postcards in 48 hours—turning speed and creative control into a competitive advantage. (more)

• M-XR launched the Marso Measure 3D Capture Programme starting January 2026, offering 3D scan artists free access to Marso Measure with prizes including up to £3,000, Sony A7 Mark IV cameras, annual licenses, and Certified Scan Artist status for the best scanners. (more)

• Distance Technologies showcased their latest capabilities at a private Slush event, demonstrating how they're seamlessly fusing visible, infrared, and thermal signals with pixel-level depth precision to power physical AI with superhuman visual acuity for defence and automotive applications. (more)

• IXI revealed their latest prototype weighing just 22 grams—the lightest smart glasses frame in the world—featuring true-fit frame architecture that allows precise, personalized adjustments at temples, nose piece, and lens angle for all-day comfort, with the waitlist now open. (more)

• Atopia partnered with The Metropolitan Museum of Art to transform two iconic collections into immersive worlds explorable for free in web or VR: Oceania featuring Pacific-inspired landscapes from the Rockefeller Wing, and Dendur Decoded exploring the Temple of Dendur's story through interactive chapters. (more)

FOV JOBS

VIEW ALL OPEN ROLES HERE

• Brainspark Games is hiring a PR Events & Marketing Assistant Manager in London, UK to help amplify their AI-driven educational games following their Dragons' Den investment. (apply)

• AI Coustics has an opening for an Experienced Backend Developer (Mid-Senior Level) in Berlin, Germany to build infrastructure for their speech enhancement technology. (apply)

• Roro is hiring two Unreal programmers in Stockholm: Unreal Gameplay Systems Programmer and Unreal Generalist Programmer (both Mid-Senior Level) to build Hello Home, the first 3D digital dollhouse. (apply)

• Atopia Space is seeking an SDR / Outbound Sales Freelancer (Remote or Munich) to help scale their metaverse platform for arts & culture. (apply)

• IXI has an Entry Level Development Engineer position open across multiple locations for their optical technology team. (apply)

• Doublepoint is hiring a Senior ML Engineer in Helsinki, Finland to advance their gesture control technology for AR experiences. (apply)

Michael is the founder of Radiance Fields, a consulting firm specialising in 3D reconstruction technology. He built his expertise and online presence in radiance fields before the technology hit mainstream adoption, positioning him at the forefront of this emerging space. Through his consulting work with corporations exploring 3D applications and his industry-recognised content, Michael offers both technical depth and market perspective on how radiance fields and Gaussian splatting are reshaping industries from e-commerce to construction.

Every digital product today pretends reality is flat.

For 40 years, we've forced the complexity of the 3D world onto rectangular screens. This worked well enough for film and web content, but it created two structural gaps that are now barriers to progress:

1. Physics Gap: Traditional 2D tools and manual 3D modelling cannot accurately capture the physical behaviour of light and materials in the real world.

2. Scale Gap: Traditional 3D pipelines are too slow and labour-intensive to digitise the physical world at the speed and fidelity required.

If computing is going truly spatial - if AI, robots, and AR are to operate convincingly in physical environments - digital objects must behave like real ones.

The industry's historic solution - creation (modelling scenes by hand in tools like Blender and Unreal) - simply does not scale.

The revolution lies in switching focus from manual creation to scalable capture.

The technical breakthrough is a family of AI techniques called Radiance Fields, with Gaussian Splatting (GS) emerging as the most practical implementation. GS can reconstruct photorealistic 3D from ordinary photos or video.

Gaussian splatting excels at capturing large, expansive spaces without sacrificing smaller details.

Gaussian Splatting is the first 3D technology to simultaneously deliver the necessary speed and fidelity to bridge the digital and physical divide. It transforms the capture of real-world physics into a scalable, accessible process.

At FOV Ventures, this capability is the foundation of our investment thesis: spatial computing requires solving content creation at scale first. We believe this technology creates the essential, missing infrastructure layer.

We spoke with Michael Rubloff of RadianceFields.com to get a view on this rapidly accelerating space and what is now suddenly possible.

Why This Matters Now: The Shift to Real-Time Reality

The entire value proposition of Radiance Fields lies in their technical depth - they bypass traditional 3D construction entirely.

Instead of creating geometry - the manual, low-fidelity process of modelling with polygons - these AI methods learn how light travels through space from multiple input images. This captures not just shape, but the physical behaviour of light, ensuring material fidelity that manual methods could never match.

Polygons vs Splats: two ways of building a 3D world

While this concept emerged years ago, the initial implementations, like Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs), were computationally intensive. They delivered photorealism but required vast compute - often minutes to render a single frame - making them impractical for any real-time application. However, in 2022, that changed with the publishing of NVIDIA’s Instant NGP, dropping reconstruction time and VRAM requirements. 

The critical leap occurred with Gaussian Splatting (GS), which won best paper at SIGGRAPH in 2023. The paper was published in April that year and for months, nobody reacted. Then it won at SIGGRAPH and the response was immediate - companies like Niantic's Scanniverse pivoted overnight, redirecting all resources toward Gaussian splatting.

While NeRFs still produce better visual quality in many cases, they can't be distributed easily across devices or rendered in real-time on standard hardware (for now). Gaussian splatting achieves the necessary compromise by representing scenes as millions of explicit, optimised 3D points rather than an implicit neural network. This allows photorealistic data to be efficiently rasterised on standard GPUs at real-time speeds (100+ FPS), transforming a research curiosity into something commercially viable.

A small, but growing number of engineers Michael speaks with are questioning the long-term viability of triangular meshes as the fundamental representation for 3D. NeRFs have the capabilities of producing photorealistic 3D in files under 1MB - smaller than traditional meshes (although more work here is needed). The only problem is they need powerful GPUs to render. But as GPUs get cheaper and faster, that constraint disappears. Some engineers think neural representations like NeRFs will eventually replace meshes entirely - smaller file sizes, better quality, and they capture how light actually behaves rather than approximating it with geometry.

Gaussian’s practical advantage came from three things converging at the same time:

1. Improved Camera Accessibility: Now any camera can produce the data for radiance fields, since their input is normal 2D images.

2. Accessible Compute: Real-time rendering runs on standard GPUs, not expensive datacenters.

3. Sophisticated AI Models: Can handle messy, real-world conditions (shake, imperfect lighting).

As a result, the technology is rapidly moving from research to production.

Meta's recently launched Hyperscape uses radiance field capture on Quest headsets to create photorealistic virtual replicas of physical spaces, now rolling out multiplayer features so multiple people can explore scanned rooms together.

Hyperscape Capture remains one of the highest profile deployments of Gaussian Splatting for consumer VR, translating a scan made on a standalone headset into a view dependent, radiance field representation that users can revisit later.

Meta have also released SAM 3D Objects for single-image 3D reconstruction, which powers Facebook Marketplace's "View in Room" feature for furniture visualisation. The research is rapidly moving beyond demos into real products being shipped to serve users. When Big Tech invests at this scale across complementary 3D technologies, it validates that the infrastructure layer has crossed from experimental to essential.

Hardware too is evolving to match the software capabilities.

The capture barrier is rapidly falling. Today, smartphone cameras - particularly the iPhone with its depth of field, sharpness, and computational photography - are good enough for quality reconstructions with no specialised equipment meaning people can build photorealistic 3D models with the phone in their pocket.

And elsewhere, consumer hardware is being repurposed in unexpected ways. Action cameras like Insta360, originally designed for extreme sports footage, are now being rigged up in arrays of 30+ units for volumetric capture. Companies are using tools in ways manufacturers never intended, a clear signal that demand is outpacing purpose-built solutions.

XGRIDS arrived as the first cameras designed specifically for Gaussian splatting capture, with built-in SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping) for spatial tracking. At $5,000, the Portal sits at prosumer pricing - expensive for consumers but within range of what professionals already spend on high-end mirrorless cameras and lenses.

Michael expects this tier to expand rapidly over the next two years, with truly consumer-grade devices arriving within five years. Major manufacturers like Canon and Sony will likely be forced to release lines that shoot natively in 3D.

The trajectory mirrors photography's evolution:

• → professional equipment shrinks to consumer form factors

• →→ costs drop by orders of magnitude

• →→→ suddenly everyone creates content that once required specialists.

When capture becomes that accessible, the constraint shifts from "can we create enough 3D content" to "what do we build with all this 3D data".

This shift unlocks immediate, high-value opportunities across multiple verticals.

Where The Opportunities Are

Michael has been tracking this space long enough to separate near-term opportunities from distant possibilities.

His assessment is that startups need to focus on industries with clear, funded problems where better 3D visualisation creates immediate, measurable value rather than chasing consumer applications that may take years to materialise.

1. Hard services industries offer the clearest path.

Geospatial companies, architecture firms, and construction operations already pay significant money for 3D data through LiDAR scans, photogrammetry, and drone surveys.

Current methods work but they're expensive and time-consuming, which means radiance fields don't have to convince these buyers that 3D data is valuable - they just have to prove they can deliver it faster and cheaper. "Even the visualisation itself is a huge step forward from what they have traditionally worked with," Michael notes. The value proposition is immediate: better spatial data, lower cost per capture, faster turnaround from field work to usable models.

Horizon-GS, tackles the unified reconstruction and rendering for aerial and street views with a new training strategy, overcoming viewpoint discrepancies to generate high-fidelity scenes.

Architecture, engineering, and construction workflows need accurate spatial documentation for planning, change detection, and as-built verification. These industries understand ROI in concrete terms, which makes them attractive beachheads for startups that can navigate longer sales cycles and complex procurement processes.

2. Education and training applications create repeatable value.

Creating realistic training environments typically requires either expensive physical mockups or months of 3D modelling work by specialised artists.

Radiance fields let you capture a real space once and train people in that exact environment repeatedly, which matters enormously for medical training, industrial safety protocols, and military simulations where the physical environment is critical and mistakes carry real consequences.

The content creation bottleneck has kept many training applications stuck in simplified 3D environments or 2D video instructional content. Radiance fields remove that constraint entirely, enabling organisations to build libraries of real-world scenarios that would be too dangerous, expensive, or logistically complex to recreate physically for every training session.

This capability is already being demonstrated in the medical field, as 3D Gaussian Splatting makes cinematic, photorealistic, interactive 3D visualisations of human anatomy accessible on consumer devices, potentially moving complex anatomical study from restricted lecture halls to mobile, personal learning environments.

Application of 3D Gaussian Splatting for Cinematic Anatomy on Consumer Devices

3. The middleware layer remains mostly unbuilt.

Reconstruction tools exist, viewers exist, but the connective tissue between capture and application is sparse. Major platforms are already adding native support - Houdini announced Gaussian splatting integration, as did Octane Render, and plugins exist for Unity and Unreal. Michael expects consolidation here, with existing software platforms absorbing basic functionality rather than startups building standalone tools.

The question for companies building in this layer is whether they're creating features that eventually get absorbed or solving problems those platforms fundamentally can't address because they're too general-purpose. The opportunities exist in workflow-specific tools: automated quality checking for captures, format conversion pipelines, optimisation tools that reduce file sizes while preserving visual fidelity, and integration bridges between capture hardware and industry-standard software.

4. Vertical-specific solutions will win over horizontal platforms.

Michael emphasises there won't be one winner serving all industries. Each vertical has different technical requirements and workflow needs. Geospatial applications need outdoor capture at scale with georeferencing and integration with GIS systems. E-commerce needs controlled lighting, precise colour accuracy, and fast iteration for product catalog consistency. Architecture requires integration with BIM workflows, construction documentation standards, and compliance with building codes. Training applications need real-time manipulation, scenario editing capabilities, and assessment tracking.

Companies building horizontal platforms will lose to specialists who understand specific industry requirements deeply enough to build the right features, integrations, and go-to-market strategies that resonate with buyers who already have established workflows and purchasing processes.

5. Consumer and prosumer tools are emerging.

The fundamental accessibility of Gaussian Splatting - running on commodity hardware - guarantees a vibrant market for consumer and prosumer tools, even if the immediate ROI is less defined than in enterprise applications. The technical capability is already shifting the creator economy around 3D content.

Beyond creation, this accessibility enables the most personal use case: Memory Capture. Families can now scan rooms, objects, and moments, creating the spatial equivalent of photo albums. Apple's adoption of Gaussian Splatting for its Vision Pro platform validates this future, using the technology to power its highly immersive "Spatial Scenes" and the lifelike "Personas" used in virtual communication. The technical capability exists today to capture grandparents, childhood homes, and meaningful objects in full 3D, creating 3D versions of important moments that people will wish they had 50 years from now.

Apple’s “Spatial Scenes”

Building on this, Prosumer creators are finding workflows. Tools like PlayCanvas's Super Splat make basic editing accessible, and platforms like Arrival Space enable sharing captures with spatial audio and multi-user exploration - imagine touring a friend's apartment renovation or a wedding venue before booking.

The creator economy hasn't fully materialised yet, but the tools are readying the opportunity for platforms to distribute at scale.

The Ultimate Prize: Gaussian Splatting as the Foundation for Physical AI

While the commercial opportunities in AEC and training are significant, the ultimate, high-value application of radiance fields is much more than better graphics - but creating the foundational data layer required for Physical AI.

AI models need massive amounts of high-quality 3D data to truly understand spatial relationships and physical behaviour. You can't train robots to navigate spaces or manipulate objects without photorealistic 3D representations of how the world actually works.

NVIDIA's integration of Gaussian Splatting into Omniverse and Isaac Sim through their NuRec neural rendering API makes this concrete. They are using it to create physically accurate digital twins of factory floors and real-world spaces where robots are trained before deployment.

Integrating 4D Gaussian Splats into Omniverse and Isaac Sim

Progress, Challenges, and What Comes Next

insights.evercoast.ai/p/integrating-4d-gaussian-splats-into

Their Physically Embodied Gaussians (real geometry, surfaces, and properties) approach combines particles for physics simulation with Gaussians for visual appearance, creating a continuously synchronised world model. This speed is key: Gaussian splatting enables real-time SLAM, allowing robots to build live internal models of environments as they navigate.

Research groups are already building on this foundation. SplaTAM and Gaussian-SLAM create dense, photorealistic maps of unknown environments in real-time as robots explore. GaussianGrasper allows robots to understand and interact with objects using language prompts and view-robust policies and Volvo uses Gaussian splatting for safety simulations and virtual world creation for autonomous vehicle development.

The pattern = wherever robots need to understand physical spaces, Gaussian splatting provides the training data.

GaussianGrasper lets a robot look at just a few pictures of a scene, quickly build a simple 3D version of it using “Gaussian splats,” understand which object you’re talking about (from your words), and then figure out the safest place to grab it.

Gaussian Splatting to enhance, train and validate Volvo’s driver safety systems.

This connects directly to FOV's thesis on physical AI and robotics.

The convergence of spatial computing, computer vision, and embodied AI all depend on the same underlying requirement: high-fidelity representations of the physical world. Radiance fields provide that foundation in ways traditional 3D modelling never could, because they capture not just geometry but the physical behaviour of light, materials, and spatial relationships that AI systems need to learn from.

Companies like Gauzilla Pro (web editor for 3D Gaussian Splatting) are already thinking beyond static visualisation toward how lifelike 3D becomes the foundation for AI systems that need to understand and interact with physical spaces - and their tools make those high-fidelity 3D maps simple to create.

This convergence is not linear; but a powerful feedback loop.

Better capture methods create superior training data, which produces more capable AI models, which enable smarter robotic systems, all demanding even higher fidelity spatial data. Radiance fields finally provide the bedrock for this loop.

This is the missing infrastructure that will unlock physical-world computing.

At FOV Ventures, we're investing in companies solving different pieces of this stack - from material capture to object digitisation to spatial AI applications. The companies that win will be the ones that understand both the technical capabilities and the specific industry problems where those capabilities create measurable value.

If you're building at the intersection of 3D capture, spatial computing, or physical AI, we'd like to hear from you. Reach out.

Thanks to Michael Rubloff of RadianceFields.com for sharing his insights on this rapidly evolving space. For anyone working with or researching radiance fields, his site remains the definitive resource for tracking developments in NeRFs, Gaussian splatting, and related technologies.

Twenty years ago, a few women quietly changed the course of my life - opening doors, sharing playbooks, and showing me that venture capital could be a path long before I even knew it was one.

Now, in a rare full-circle moment, one of those early mentors has joined as an LP in a new syndicate we’re building - a vehicle designed to make smaller ticket entries possible for women (and men) alike.

It’s proof of something I’ve seen again and again: representation compounds. When one woman invests, she often opens the path for many more.
But for most women, those bridges don’t yet exist - or if they do, they’re hidden.

We’ve all seen the charts showing how few female founders and GPs there are in Europe. But there’s another layer shaping everything that happens above it - the people deciding where the money flows.

The limited partners.

While women now make up slightly more of the LP base than of GP seats, their presence remains largely invisible. We don’t have real data on their journeys - what drew them in, what held them back, or what could make it easier for others to follow.

Because who funds the funds decides who gets funded.

That’s why we’re launching the Female LP Pathways Survey - the first Europe-wide study mapping how women invest in venture, the obstacles they face, and the opportunities that could unlock the next wave of female funders.

There’s no visible roadmap for women who want to start investing in funds - we’re each building our own bridge as we walk it. That’s why this survey matters - it can make the path clearer for those who come next.

The message is clear: progress begins with visibility. Understanding who gets access — and who doesn’t — is the first step toward lasting change.

Building a Shared Map

In collaboration with FOV Ventures, Tesi, unlock VC, Ada Ventures, Kvanted, and many more, this 6–10-minute anonymous survey invites all women in Europe interested in venture — from seasoned investors to those simply curious — to share their story.

Every response will feed into a transparent, open-access dataset published in 2026 — available to funds, LPs, networks, and policymakers alike. Because this isn’t about another private report. It’s about building a shared resource the whole ecosystem can use.

We’ve seen growing data around female founders and GPs — but the LP side remains a blind spot. I’ve seen what happens when representation compounds: when one woman invests, she makes it possible for many more to follow. This survey is about making those journeys visible — turning curiosity into clarity, and clarity into change.

Why Now

Governments and institutions are starting to take notice - from the British Business Bank’s £500 million commitment to diverse fund managers to EIF’s inclusion targets.

But we’re still missing the upstream piece: who’s investing behind the funds, and what’s needed to make LP participation more inclusive.

If we want capital to flow more equitably, we need to start at the source - with the people who decide where it goes. 

Your Invitation

If you’ve ever thought about investing into a fund but weren’t sure where to start - this survey is for you.
If you’re already investing and want to see more women beside you - this survey is for you.
If you work at a fund and want to understand how to welcome more first-time LPs - this survey is for you.

Take the 6-10-minute Female LP Pathways Survey
Help us map the pathways, barriers, and opportunities for women investing in venture. 

A Shared Future

Change starts with visibility.
When we can see the paths that already exist, we can build better ones.
When we make the invisible visible, we make it possible for thousands more to join.

This isn’t just about who invests - it’s about who gets to shape the future of venture capital.

Let’s build that future together.

Help us spread the word

Change starts with visibility.

When we can see the paths that already exist, we can build better ones.
When we make the invisible visible, we make it possible for thousands more to join.
The more voices we reach, the stronger the data becomes.

If you or your organisation want to support this movement, you can find ready-to-share assets and templates here. 

A Note of Thanks

This initiative wouldn’t exist without the support of all the amazing partners behind this initiative. Thank you. And my partners and GPs at FOV Ventures - who never once questioned the idea, only asked, “How can we help?”

And to every woman - and ally - who’s shared ideas, experiences, or encouragement along the way: thank you. Your openness is what makes change possible - and unstoppable. 

While we posted last month about Meta's smart glasses success, the XR headset space just got significantly more competitive.

Apple released the M5-powered Vision Pro this month - the first hardware update since the 2024 launch. An incremental improvement, but we believe Apple is slowly adding more compute + better content = new use cases unlocked.

For example, Apple has also begun testing immersive sports broadcasting by deploying 100+ cameras during the recent Real Madrid vs Juventus match, and announcing LA Lakers (NBA) games will be streamed in Apple Immersive to Apple Vision Pro owners next year, the first-ever live content for the format.

But the bigger news is Samsung Galaxy XR - the first device running Google's new Android XR platform, launching at $1,799.

Galaxy XR is lighter than the Vision Pro and users get access to Google Play's entire ecosystem, reimagined Google apps (Maps, Photos, YouTube, Chrome, Meet), and over 50 XR-optimised experiences from Adobe, Calm, Fox Sports, and more.

All of Google Maps Immersive View interiors are reportedly fully explorable with Gaussian splatting - a technical achievement that hints at where spatial computing is headed.

But what makes Galaxy XR transformative isn’t that Gemini AI is built into the core experience.

As CNET's XR specialist Scott Stein put it, Gemini is the "killer app." It understands what you're seeing and doing in real-time. Watching basketball highlights? Just ask about a player's stats. Exploring the Colosseum in Google Maps? Ask about its history. Workspace too cluttered? Say "Hey Google, organise these windows" and Gemini arranges everything instantly.

This is significant because Gemini is wildly more capable, embedded, and standalone-viable than Meta AI (in smart glasses) or Apple Intelligence (still catching up). Galaxy XR is the clearest sign yet of how AI-first software can reinvent the interface layer for spatial computing.

Google is positioning this as the preview of a broader Android XR ecosystem - with Gemini at the heart.

Three Giants, Three Approaches

• Meta: Consumer adoption through affordable Quest and Ray-Ban smart glasses, betting on volume

• Apple: Premium experience, ecosystem lock-in, waiting for the technology to be "undeniable"

• Google: Platform play via Android XR, betting on Gemini AI as the differentiator and enabling multiple hardware partners

Samsung's return to XR (they exited after Gear VR shipped 6 million units in 2016) signals confidence in the market's readiness. With Google's platform approach, expect more Android XR devices from other manufacturers soon.

The platform war is officially on - and that creates massive opportunity. Startups can now seriously consider building scalable tools, middleware, and applications that work across all three or they'll go deep on the AI layer, where Gemini's early lead in spatial understanding creates openings for specialised applications.

If you're building for this future, we'd love to hear from you.

FOV NEWS

FOV @ Slush 2025

We’re back at Slush with a full lineup of events designed to spark real connections — from technical deep dives to champagne-fuelled panels. Whether you’re a founder, investor, or future LP, we’ve got something for you.

They are all almost sold out — grab your spot while you can!

OpenAI × FOV: Founder Workshop Mon 17 Nov | 3:15–4:30 pm Get under the hood with OpenAI and FOV for an exclusive technical session designed for early-stage founders building in AI. Apply for a ticket

Minus One: Pre-Slush Investor Drinks Mon 17 Nov | 7:30–11:00 pm Join 200+ top VCs, LPs, and select founders for the legendary Minus One — the night-before-Slush where the real conversations (and deals) begin. Apply for a ticket

Female LP Side Event Mon 17 Nov | 7:30–11:00 pm Join 200+ top VCs, LPs, and select founders for the legendary Minus One — the night-before-Slush where the real conversations (and deals) begin. Apply for a ticket

VIEWPOINTS — The Exclusive Book Edition

We’ve been quietly working on something special. VIEWPOINTS is our upcoming book on frontier tech — exploring why it’s poised for outsized returns and the signals that really matter.

Be among the first to dive into the insights shaping the next decade of innovation — you can now pre-order your digital copy. We start shipping around Slush.

Merci Paris

Our Defence & Deep Tech Night with Ventech at The Gate VR was packed with sharp minds, wild ideas, and a few hilarious VR wipeouts.

We had LPs, VCs, and founders exploring the frontiers of defence, AI, robotics, and spatial computing — and the conversations were just as electric as the games.

Missed it or want to relive the fun?
👉 See the event photos here

Big love to Ventech and The Gate VR for helping make it one unforgettable night.

FOV PORTFOLIO NEWS

• Brainspark Games founder Reedah El-Saie secured a rare triple investment on BBC's Dragons' Den from Sara Davies, Deborah Meaden, and Touker Suleyman for her AI-driven educational games that compress 12 weeks of learning into hours of gameplay, making curriculum-aligned education accessible for neurodiverse learners. (more)

• Distance Technologies partnered with General Dynamics Land Systems to showcase the world's first XR Night Vision on a Ford Ranger windshield at DSEI UK, projecting any information at any distance in total darkness by fusing lidar, infrared, and thermal data - reaching the global defence stage just 20 months after company founding. (more)

• Move AI Demoed in Nanjing with Original Force, showing 170+ animators and game developers how Move AI eliminates technical bottlenecks and turning motion capture into a creative playground. (more)

• Flow Computing released new PPU performance results showing their 256-core PPU boosting CPU performance by 31x against 5th Gen Intel Xeon, proving that when parallelism becomes the starting point, CPU performance enters a new era. (more)

• Starstuff reached 20M social media views, 1.3M users, and 72k+ creators, positioning themselves as one of the fastest-growing playable Gen-AI content platforms for the next generation of creators. (more)

• Kubos Semiconductors appointed Dr. Susan Gormley as CEO, bringing 30+ years of experience from IQE (more)

• Doublepoint's WowMouse made TIME Magazine's Best Inventions of 2025 list as a special mention, recognizing their innovative gesture control technology for computing interfaces. (more)

• Roro launched Early Access signups on iOS for their new dollhouse experience innovating on creative play and self-expression, allowing users to build dream houses, create custom rooms, and tell their own stories. (more)

• IXI CEO Niko Eiden spoke about their elegant autofocus solution combining eye tracking with fully tunable liquid crystal lenses for real-time, gaze-based correction, with all technology housed in the front of the frame for balance and normal eyewear aesthetics. (more)

• Spogen.ai showcased their AI-powered Smart Farming, with the Valtra Coach Talking Tractor making the DLG-Agrifuture Concept 2025 shortlist for transforming manuals and machine data into real-time guidance and actionable analytics for farmers. (more)

FOV JOBS

VIEW ALL OPEN ROLES HERE

• Starstuff is expanding their team with seven roles: Frontend Developer, Backend Developer, Game Developer, AI/ML Engineer, Technical Artist, Animation & 3D Artist, and UI/UX Designer for their playable Gen-AI platform. (apply)

• M-XR has multiple senior positions open in London, UK: MTS - ML Infrastructure, MTS - Applied Research, MTS - Research Lead, MTS - Machine Learning, and MTS - Backend roles for their spatial computing platform. (apply)

• Flow Computing is hiring three critical engineering roles: PPU/CPU Modeling Engineer, Compiler Engineer, and Senior LLVM Compiler Backend Engineer to build their Parallel Processing Unit. (apply)

• AI Coustics has two openings in Berlin, Germany: Machine Learning Engineer and Experienced Backend Developer for their speech enhancement technology team. (apply)

Welcome to Viewpoints, news and investment activity covering the next generation of computing - brought to you by FOV Ventures.

This Month:

• Meta's Ray Ban Display launches

• Why ecosystem play matters more than AR features for mass adoption

• IXI acquires manufacturing, Distance's FT ranking, Starstuff hits 20M views

Dave Haynes, Petri Rajahalme, Sointu Karjalainen & David Ripert (FOV Ventures)

It has been another fast-moving month for our space, with Meta launching the Ray-Ban Display glasses for $799. While AR purists might dismiss them as "just a HUD," that's precisely why they matter. These aren't quite full AR glasses yet, as they lack spatial mapping, world-locked holograms, and fancy hand tracking overlaid on your environment.

Instead, you get a small, private heads-up display in your right eye and an EMG wristband that reads muscle signals to control everything discreetly.

But that restraint is a smart decision.

The previous Ray-Ban Meta saw 200% sales growth in the first half of 2025. People are ready to wear computers on their faces - but only if they're practical, not gimmicky.

Reviewers suggest Display nails this, glanceable map directions, message previews, live translation, and a viewfinder for the 12MP camera. Nothing that requires staring awkwardly into space, waving your hands around or steep learning curves. The Neural Band's EMG gestures mean you can control everything with subtle finger movements while your hand rests on your lap. It's socially acceptable computing, and that's a big unlock.

For VCs, this inflection point is significant. Hardware adoption was always the bottleneck for spatial computing. That barrier is now crumbling. Software is already capable and will catch up to be integrated with the device. Meta has already announced the opening of an SDK, which means developers can finally build for a wearable platform with real consumer traction.

But integration is also a significant gap. While Meta owns Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, most people's digital lives are inside Gmail (Google), ChatGPT (OpenAI) or Teams (Microsoft). The Ray-Ban Display doesn't seamlessly tap into those ecosystems yet, and that leaves competitive room for others to fill.

OpenAI certainly thinks so. According to the Financial Times, they're building a palm-sized, screenless AI assistant, targeted for 2026/27, with Jony Ive. It would listen and see through always-on mics and cameras, running multimodal chat at scale.

Apple also looms large. Their leaked AR glasses roadmap extends through 2028, and they've historically excelled at ecosystem integration. If they can tie spatial computing seamlessly into iMessage, iCloud, and Siri, they'll have an advantage Meta can't easily replicate.

This space is moving faster than ever and Mixed Reality now has a device and canvas being accepted by the masses. Hardware is increasingly becoming less of a blocker, with integration, ecosystem play, and developer tools being the next tests.

If you're building for this future, we'd love to hear from you.

FOV NEWS

VIEWPOINTS - Exclusive Digital Edition

This summer we have been working hard to collate a collection of our most read content, new deep dives on topics, and stories from our portfolio companies into a book.

Book Pre-Orders - Viewpoints

Get early insights access to VIEWPOINTS: The Next Era of Computing and Why it Matters by signing up below:

forms.fillout.com/t/sUKRzC4RZzus

Upcoming Events

This week, we're hosting Ecosystem Networking in Tallinn on Thursday in partnership with Google, bringing together founders, investors, and operators working in AI, computer vision, spatial computing, robotics, and 3D & game engines. Register below:

Ecosystem Networking Powered by FOV Ventures and Google · Luma

Come and join us for an evening to connect founders, investors and operators working in areas like AI, Computer Vision, Spatial Computing, Robotics, 3D & Game…

luma.com/7idueesq

On Friday (10th), Dave is keynoting at Realiti.express in Tallinn, the premier annual gathering for XR developers in the Baltic states and beyond.

On Sunday (12th), Dave will also be attending Expand North Star in Dubai.

Next month, we're co-hosting Defence Tech & Deep Tech Night at The Gate VR in Paris with Ventech, exploring the convergence of defense applications and spatial computing technologies, register below:

Defence Tech & Deep Tech Night @The Gate VR · Luma

Join us for a special Defence & Deep Tech Night at The Gate VR, hosted by FOV Ventures and Ventech.

luma.com/y4oq1s7n

Slush × FOV: Minus One, LP Event & CTO Workshop

We're hosting Minus One: FOV Ventures Pre-Slush Drinks on November 17th at Allas Sea Pool in Helsinki. Once again, we're opening the doors to 250+ leading VCs, LPs, and founders for the night before Slush kicks off. Last year's event brought together the European spatial computing ecosystem for collisions, connections, and conversations that ran late into the night.

Minus One: FOV Ventures Pre-Slush Drinks · Luma

luma.com/ifxqky04

We're also co-hosting a Female LP Side Event during Slush 2025, creating space for women LPs to connect at one of Europe's largest startup gatherings. Pre-registration is now open for personal invites to this exclusive gathering.

Slush 2025 | Female LP Side Event · Luma

luma.com/wr3jgmp9

Additionally, we're running an exclusive technical workshop with OpenAI (extremely limited capacity) for select portfolio founders. More details available upon request.

OpenAI × FOV: Exclusive Technical Workshop for Founders · Luma

For the first time ever in Finland, OpenAI is opening the playbook. Spaces are extremely limited, but you can request waitlist here!

luma.com/x6fmsj13

See you on the road. ✌️

FOV PORTFOLIO NEWS

• IXI is scaling autofocus eyewear production in Europe, acquiring the lens manufacturing facility of Finnsusp Oy in Finland and entering a strategic partnership with Optiswiss, one of Europe's leading independent lens manufacturers, to create a vertically integrated production base where optical precision expertise runs deepest. (more below)

www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7379089770997764096

• Starstuff reached 20M social media views, 1.3M users (!), and 72k+ creators, positioning themselves as one of the fastest-growing playable Gen-AI content platforms for the next generation of creators (more)
  

• Distance Technologies ranked 12th largest defence tech startup in Europe by Financial Times (more)
  

• Flow Computing launched Parallel Perspectives, a podcast exploring how they translate academic research into commercial-grade silicon for their Parallel Processing Unit (more)
  

• Scenario continues to integrate improved models across its platform, now offering video content and audio generation alongside its image and 3D capabilities to help game developers, designers, and marketers create assets faster (more)
  

• GEEIQ published a superb analysis of Roblox's vision for 2026, breaking down how their new TikTok-style feed and AI-generated 4D items will impact not just their platform but the direction of gaming as a whole (more)
  

• Iconic announced their first game The Oversight Bureau with NVIDIA at Gamescom, showcasing how generative AI enables fundamentally new gameplay experiences through their patent-pending Narrative Engine powered by NVIDIA ACE for real-time speech recognition and dynamic dialogue (more)
  

• Spogen.ai launched their new website at spogen.ai
  

• Ray Browser introduced customisation features allowing users to change skins and wallpapers, giving users the ability to personalise their gaming-optimised browser experience. (more)
  

• Psytec Games have launched their new VR title Titan Isles - a fast-paced, bullet hell, action-shooter title. It’s the spiritual successor to their previous ‘Windlands’ series and can be played solo or with up to 4 others. Check the trailer below and download the game for Quest or on Steam.

FOV JOBS

VIEW ALL OPEN ROLES HERE

• Starstuff is expanding their team with seven roles: Frontend Developer, Backend Developer, Game Developer, AI/ML Engineer, Technical Artist, Animation & 3D Artist, and UI/UX Designer for their playable Gen-AI platform. (apply)

• M-XR has multiple senior positions open in London, UK: MTS - ML Infrastructure, MTS - Applied Research, MTS - Research Lead, MTS - Machine Learning, and MTS - Backend roles for their spatial computing platform. (apply)

• Flow Computing is hiring three critical engineering roles: PPU/CPU Modeling Engineer, Compiler Engineer, and Senior LLVM Compiler Backend Engineer to build their Parallel Processing Unit. (apply)

• AI Coustics has two openings in Berlin, Germany: Machine Learning Engineer and Experienced Backend Developer for their speech enhancement technology team. (apply)

• GEEIQ is seeking an Engineering Manager in London, UK (£80k-120k/year) to lead their gaming analytics platform engineering team. (apply)

Thanks for reading, see you next time!

Welcome to Viewpoints, news and investment activity covering the next generation of computing - brought to you by FOV Ventures.

This Month:

• IXI featured on BBC News

• Ray-Ban Meta Sale Numbers

• FOV Portfolio Company Hits Half a Million Users

Dave Haynes, Petri Rajahalme, Sointu Karjalainen & David Ripert (FOV Ventures)

At FOV Ventures, we watch Meta's numbers because they provide one of the most reliable leading indicators for spatial computing adoption.

In his post-earnings interview with The Information, Zuckerberg doubled down on this vision, articulating how "personal super intelligence" differs from today's AI paradigm - emphasising that the future of AI understands and operates in our physical world through spatial computing interfaces.

As part of the earnings we saw Ray-Ban Meta glasses outsold VR headsets 2:1, validating Zuckerberg's thesis that glasses will be "the ideal form factor for AI" because they create persistent sensory bridges between digital / physical. But equally important - this demonstrates that consumer demand for AI is strong enough to drive physical hardware adoption in ways that virtual worlds alone couldn't. Where VR still marches towards mass market appeal, AI-enhanced glasses are accelerating as they augment rather than replace our physical reality.

Beyond Meta, this continues to signal the readiness for the broader physical AI revolution happening right now.

For example, Genesis AI just emerged from stealth with $105M to build robotics foundation models. and video AI companies like Luma and Runway are reportedly also moving toward robotics, recognising that understanding physical movement is the next trillion-dollar opportunity.

Smart glasses represent the consumer interface for this physical AI stack because they're the only device that can seamlessly bridge digital AI capabilities with real-world spatial context. While robotics and foundation models handle the heavy computation and physical manipulation, glasses provide the always-on sensory layer that lets AI see what you see, understand your spatial context, and respond appropriately in the physical world. They're the keyboard and mouse for a world where AI operates across both digital and physical domains.

The companies building the software layers that make this physical/digital bridge programmable - from simulation environments to AI-hardware interfaces - represent the next AWS-scale opportunity.

At FOV Ventures, we've positioned across this entire stack - from portfolio companies automating game testing with AI agents that transfer to real robots, to 3D content generation platforms, to gesture control interfaces. The recent growth of Ray-Ban Metas is the latest canary in the coal mine of the platform shift happening now.

If you're building or investing in this space, we'd love to hear from you.

FOV NEWS

• In case you missed it… last month we published a new analysis on Defence Tech x Spatial Computing: A New Era of Dual-Use Innovation.

Spatial Computing Meets Defence Tech: The Dual-Use Innovation Opportunity

How spatial computing technologies are revolutionising defence - from AR tactical displays to autonomous robotics. Exploring the opportunity for startups and VCs.

viewpoints.fov.ventures/p/spatial-computing-defense-tech-dual-use-innovation

Gearing up for the final events of Q3 - come meet the FOV team at:

• Petri will be at Tech BBQ (Copenhagen) - August 27-28

• Dave in Zurich - September 9-10

• Sointu at European VC Platform Summit (Berlin) - September 10-12

• Petri at IPEM (Paris) - September 24-26

• Dave at Bits & Pretzels (Munich) - September 29 - October 1

If you're attending any of these events and want to connect, reach out to the team!

FOV PORTFOLIO NEWS

• IXI featured on BBC News with their upcoming autofocus glasses, talking about their adaptive tech that enhances everyday clarity without sacrificing style.v

• Scenario launched "Generate in Parts" that transforms any image into a clean, modular 3D model in just one click.

• nunu.ai launched Nexus - AI agents that can control computers, phones, and robots through natural language. Currently helping game studios automate QA testing

• Ray Browser featured Tall Team co-founder John Halloran in an interview about their upcoming game Obby Roads and the future of web gaming.

• Flow Computing published their explainer on the Parallel Processing Unit (PPU), a licensable IP block that delivers scalable, high-throughput parallel performance. (more)

• GEEIQ's CEO joined a podcast to discuss brand success in virtual worlds —from Roblox's evolution to Fortnite's algorithm shifts. (more)

• M-XR rolled out their new website and UI, with Marso now being tested with select users before broader access opens up.

• ZENOS unveiled Game Twins - real-time, 1-to-1 recreations of live games inside Unreal Engine, solving esports' problem of outdated observer tools.

• Starstuff hit half a million early beta users in just months with their viral playable social platform designed for Gen Z!!

• Atopia Space won Munich's Innovation Prize and was chosen by the City of Munich to bring public art programs into virtual worlds, co-creating a virtual stage inside a digital twin of an iconic Munich site.

FOV JOBS

VIEW ALL OPEN ROLES HERE

• IXI - Lead Android Developer (apply)

• Doublepoint - Principal ML Engineer in Helsinki, Finland to advance their gesture control technology for AR experiences. (apply)

• M-XR has multiple openings in London, UK: ML/AI Infra, Eng & Data Ops, ML/AI Applied Research, and ML/AI Image Models roles available for their spatial computing platform. (apply)

• GEEIQ has multiple positions open in London, UK: Client Services Executive, Head of Marketing, and Fullstack Engineer (£50k-65k/year) for their gaming analytics platform. (apply)

• ai|coustics has multiple openings in Berlin, Germany: GTM Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, and Founding Sales Development Representative roles available for their speech enhancement technology team. (apply)

• AQL Robotics is expanding their Tampere, Finland team with three roles: Mechanical Design Engineer/Mechatronics Engineer, Laboratory Technician, and Machine Learning Engineer. (apply)

• Iconic.AI - Principal Technical Designer in London, UK (apply)

Thanks for reading, see you next time!

Welcome to Viewpoints, news and investment activity covering the next generation of computing - brought to you by FOV Ventures.

This Month:

• Spatial intelligence AI's final frontier before AGI

• Big tech doubles down - Google's $100M investment, Meta's Oakley launch, Apple's roadmap

• Defence tech convergence: our new analysis on dual-use spatial computing

Dave Haynes, Petri Rajahalme, Sointu Karjalainen & David Ripert (FOV Ventures)

What if everything impressive about today's AI is actually just the beginning? Dr. Fei-Fei Li - the "godmother of AI" who created ImageNet - believes we're missing a fundamental piece. Her thesis helps explain why the world's biggest tech companies are suddenly racing to build spatial computing devices.

The Stanford professor is now tackling 3D world modelling through her new company World Labs - a solution essential for true machine intelligence.

From her talk, Li echoed AI feels impressive… but incomplete.

While language models excel at text, they fundamentally lack understanding of how objects exist, move, and interact in three-dimensional space. She referenced how Evolution spent 540 million years developing spatial vision - from the first life forms with underwater sight to complex predator-prey dynamics that drove the evolution.

Language, by comparison, took less than 500,000 years!

The complexity of spatial intelligence requires processing 3D-to-2D projections, understanding physics, and real-world environments.

Li traced the progression from objects to scenes to worlds - the arc of computer vision moving beyond static classification toward full embodied understanding (an image = why it matters, how it relates spatially, and what could happen next).

This unlocks applications beyond today's AI - robotics that understand their environment, AR/VR that generates believable worlds, and agents that can plan and act in 3D space rather than just chat.

At FOV Ventures, we've been thinking about this progression extensively. We've written about AI's leap from information to atoms and how spatial computing is powering the robotic era. The companies solving pieces of this puzzle - from 3D capture to spatial reasoning to real-world interaction - are building the infrastructure for an entirely new computing paradigm.

For VCs, this represents the next platform. Language has reached the "product phase" - we have ChatGPT, Claude, and countless applications. But vision and spatial intelligence remain in the R&D frontier phase.

The next wave of billion-dollar startups will emerge from those building the spatial stack - tools that let machines see, understand, and act in our 3D world.

Unsurprisingly, Big tech wants to own this space.

This last month, Google is getting increasingly active at the consumer edge, evidenced by their $100 million investment in smart glasses partner Gentle Monster as they prepare Android XR-equipped glasses for 2026. This follows their broader Android XR platform strategy, with Samsung's Project Moohan headset and Xreal's consumer glasses all building on Google's ecosystem.

Meta continues doubling down after the success of Ray-Ban Meta, launching Oakley Meta HSTN for sports applications while leaked images suggest their display-equipped "Meta Celeste" glasses with EMG wrist controllers are nearing launch. While Apple's leaked roadmap shows equal commitment - an M5-powered Vision Pro this year, the lighter "Vision Air" in 2027, and true AR glasses with color displays by late 2028.

This summer is seeing strong progress across the spatial computing stack - from foundational models to consumer hardware to enterprise applications. If you're building or investing in this space, we'd love to hear from you.

FOV NEWS

We published a new analysis on Defence Tech x Spatial Computing: A New Era of Dual-Use Innovation.

As Europe's strategic awakening drives defence spending increases and procurement reform accelerates, we're seeing our core thesis - spatial computing, AR/VR, computer vision, and robotics - increasingly overlap with defence applications. From Palmer Luckey's journey from Oculus to Anduril, to FOV portfolio company Distance Technologies making impressive progress with their collaboration with Patria on mixed reality vehicle HUDs, the line between civilian and military spatial tech continues to blur. The piece explores where these worlds intersect and why this presents a timely opportunity for startups and investors alike.

Balderton Capital's Consumer AI Event 

Great to be a part of this event with JamJar Investments, True., Five Seasons Ventures, and dmg ventures - plus some FOV family and friends in the mix.

We especially enjoyed the discussion around how AI is fundamentally changing human-computer interaction with Fernanda Dobal (Cleo), Carles Reina (Eleven Labs), and Martin Gould (Spotify).

Key takeaways -

• Conversational AI moving from assistant to frontman - the next dominant consumer startups will be built around how they talk to customers.

• The reality check that your data will never be fully "AI-ready" - better to run 20 scrappy experiments than wait for perfect conditions.

• How product leaders need to completely rethink interface design as AI becomes the primary way users interact with products.

That last point resonates deeply with FOV. We're seeing this shift across our portfolio - from mixed reality UI to how voice and multimodal interfaces are reshaping entire product categories. Thanks to Laura McGinnis, Rob Moffat and team for hosting a top gathering of consumer builders.

We also joined Haynes and Boone's Founder Drinks in London last month alongside Active Partners as resident VCs for the evening.

Following a record turnout of over 80 founders at the previous quarterly event, it was another fantastic forum - always great connecting with the London ecosystem and hearing what builders are working on across different verticals.

FOV PORTFOLIO NEWS

• Scenario launched 3D generation capabilities, becoming the first unified platform for creating visual assets across the entire creative stack - images, videos, 3D models, materials, and skyboxes - with seamless export to Unity and Blender accessible through a simple "Convert to 3D" button. (more)

• GEEIQ co-founder and CEO Charles Hambro participated in a panel discussion "From Console to Culture: The Evolution of Brand Experiences" at The Future+ Innovation House in Austin on March 8th, 2025, alongside industry leaders discussing the transformation of brand experiences in gaming. (more)

• Move AI unveiled major product updates during their 'Movement Day' showcase, including Dex by Move AI for enhanced hand & finger tracking, Move Pro now available across platforms for precision motion input tuning - all designed for animators, developers, and researchers demanding lifelike motion without suits. (more)

• Flow Computing launched their official newsletter to share performance breakthroughs, inside stories, and early access to developments in CPU technology. (more)

• Doublepoint announced DoublepointLabs at AWE2025 - their new AR developer program for gesture-controlled experiences - 99% accuracy tap models and first-ever Pinch & Hold and Tap While Walking capabilities powered by IMU + PPG sensors. (more)

• Brainspark Games launched their new website at www.brainsparkgames.com, featuring their complete educational gaming platform with products for government organisations, schools, and educators, plus insights into their mission to revolutionise learning through play.

• AI Coustics introduced Quail, their most advanced real-time speech enhancement model designed for voice AI agents, audio devices, and streaming applications, delivering latency as low as 20ms while using under 1% of the compute of their cloud models. (more)

• IXI CEO and co-founder Niko Eiden was featured in MAFO optics magazine discussing how IXI is pioneering the world's first autofocus glasses with hidden technology that adapts lenses in real-time, focusing on vision enhancement rather than AR or content overlays. (more)

• Spogen.ai began real-life field testing of their Smart Assistant at Jamk bioeconomy's Bioeconomy Campus fields, piloting the technology alongside a Valtra N Series tractor and Väderstad seed drill to gather direct user feedback for agricultural applications.

FOV JOBS

Open Roles

• IXI - Lead Android Developer (apply)

• Atopia Space is seeking an Intern - Founder's Associate (m/f/d) in Munich, Germany to support their metaverse platform for arts & culture. (apply)

• AI Coustics has multiple openings in Germany: Growth Associate, GTM Engineer, and Machine Learning Engineer roles available for their speech enhancement technology team. (apply)

• Doublepoint is hiring a Principal ML Engineer in Helsinki, Finland to advance their gesture control technology for AR experiences. (apply)

• GEEIQ has two positions open in London, UK: Sales Development Representative and Fullstack Engineer (£50k-65k/year) for their gaming analytics platform. (apply)

• AQL Robotics is expanding their Tampere, Finland team with three roles: Mechanical Design Engineer/Mechatronics Engineer, Laboratory Technician, and Machine Learning Engineer. (apply)

Thanks for reading, see you next time!

At FOV Ventures, we back founders building for the next era of computing. Our thesis spans areas such as spatial computing, AR/VR, 3D engines, robotics, computer vision, and embodied AI.

While most of our portfolio companies are building for civilian markets, we increasingly see the technologies at the heart of our thesis overlapping with defence - a sector undergoing rapid technological transformation and increasing interest from both founders and investors alike. 

It’s hard to escape the fact that Europe’s strategic awakening, a re-focusing on sovereign resiliency and NATO’s growing 5% of GDP budget consensus have catalysed a defence tech innovation. From immersive simulation to visual intelligence to autonomous robotics, spatial technologies are increasingly being applied in high-stakes environments.

In this post, we explore where the worlds of spatial computing and defence intersect — and why this presents a timely opportunity for startups and investors alike.

The Convergence of Civilian & Defence Innovation

Dual-use technology is nothing new.

The Internet itself, GPS, and even drones have all emerged from defence roots before commercialising at scale. Today, the flow is often reversed: frontier innovation is being born in commercial markets and pulled into defence. 

Three forces are driving this shift:

1. Procurement reform

   The U.S. Defence Innovation Unit has compressed timelines from 3-5 years to 12-18 months while contracting $3+ billion in commercial tech. And initiatives like the UK’s Defence Security Accelerator have streamlined procurement to allow startups and commercial tech companies to contract directly with the military, bypassing traditional, slow-moving defence contractors.
   

2. Geopolitical Urgency

   Ukraine demonstrated commercial drones and AI outperforming legacy systems, spurring 20% increases in European defence spending, and
   

3. Economic reality

   Lockheed's F-35's $400+ billion development cost over 20 years versus commercial AI breakthroughs requiring ~$100 million over two years.
   

4. Changing battlefield
   The Ukraine conflict has exposed a shift from traditional armored divisions to fast, unpredictable threats like commercial drones. Western forces urgently need to modernize, and agile, software-first startups like Helsing are proving vital in adapting quickly with innovative, deployable solutions.

One of the key reasons startups are able to enter defence today is that much of this innovation sits at the 'payload layer' (software) rather than requiring full platform development (hardware).

Startups don’t have to build the entire drone, vehicle, or weapons system - they can build specialised vertical modules - such as sensors, autonomy stacks, mapping engines, perception layers - that integrate into existing military platforms.

This allows for faster iteration, lower CapEx, and easier insertion into defence programs compared to replacing entire hardware platforms, which remain dominated by primes.

When Consumer Tech Meets the Battlefield

Few individuals exemplify the dual-use journey from civilian tech to defence impact like Palmer Luckey. He originally founded Oculus, the VR company acquired by Meta (then Facebook), helping to kick off the modern era of consumer virtual reality. After departing Oculus, Luckey went on to found Anduril, a defence technology company focused on autonomous systems and AI-powered surveillance.

Anduril’s edge comes from speed - delivering 70% of capability 10% of the time. Defence buyers prioritise rapid deployment over incremental gains, creating a time-based moat few primes like BAE can match.

In a full-circle moment, Meta and Anduril have now teamed up to develop the next generation of the IVAS (Integrated Visual Augmentation System) - a USD 22 billion U.S. military program that equips soldiers with AR-enabled headsets for enhanced situational awareness, target acquisition, and battlefield communication.

This collaboration illustrates not only the maturity of spatial computing, but its strategic convergence with defence. What began as a consumer VR device is now part of an advanced, AI-driven military interface.

Strategic Alignment: Where Spatial Computing Meets Defence

Our core thesis - centred around spatial computing - touches multiple critical areas in defence. Here’s how our investment themes connect to key areas of defence transformation:

1. Simulation & Training

VR/AR for Military Training

Mixed reality technology outperforms traditional simulators in a number of ways and enables training at scale by providing realistic, repeatable and low-cost training environments. European startups like Varjo and Vrgineers are providing capabilities such as high-fidelity pilot and combat training with commercial-grade headsets.

Varjo’s devices have quickly gained a strong foothold in the aerospace and defence industries due to their technological capabilities. Varjo’s clients include companies such as Lockheed Martin, Airbus, Boeing, BAE Systems, the U.S. Army, and several NATO defence forces.

Game Engines & Digital Twin

Real-time engines like Unity and Unreal power immersive mission rehearsal and synthetic battlefield simulation. Improbable Defence is a standout here, enabling NATO-scale war gaming.

Defence companies such as Lockheed Martin are leveraging game engines like Epic’s Unreal Engine to power high-fidelity simulation and training environments. In essence, this 3D realtime engine acts as a military-grade sandbox, accelerating Lockheed’s ability to design, simulate, and validate systems — all while bridging virtual environments with real-world missions. 

2. Situational Awareness & Visualisation

Augmented Reality for Tactical Edge

From the U.S. Army’s aforementioned  IVAS (Integrated Visual Augmentation System)  to FOV portfolio Distance Technologies and Patria’s collaboration on in-vehicle mixed reality HUDs, AR is becoming key to real-time tactical decision-making. These systems overlay mission-critical data - such as navigation routes, target info, sensor feeds, or squad positions - directly into a soldier’s or vehicle operator’s field of view.

This not only improves situational awareness and reaction time in dynamic environments but also reduces cognitive load under stress. As AR hardware matures and AI integrates more seamlessly, key personnel will make faster, safer, and more informed decisions through spatially contextualised information.

Distance Technologies, a Finnish startup, is collaborating with Patria, a defence and aerospace company, to develop a mixed reality heads-up display (HUD) for Patria's 6x6 vehicles

3D Mapping & Geospatial Intelligence

Technologies like SLAM, LiDAR, and photogrammetry now enable rapid 3D reconstruction of environments from drone, satellite, or ground-based sensors. These tools generate accurate, high-resolution spatial models that are crucial for understanding complex or unfamiliar terrain. In urban combat scenarios, they support precise mission planning and line-of-sight analysis; in remote or disaster-stricken areas, they offer up-to-date situational awareness where maps may be outdated or unavailable. Defense agencies are increasingly relying on these real-time 3D models to support ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance), infrastructure assessment, and autonomous vehicle navigation. As edge processing improves, more of this mapping can be done live, on-device, and in denied environments — making it an essential capability in modern operations.

Austria-based Blackshark.ai is maybe best known for powering the 3D world in Microsoft Flight Simulator using AI to reconstruct photorealistic environments from satellite imagery.  But the same tech is used by the U.S. Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) to create real-time geospatial digital twins for mission planning, ISR, and UAV navigation. It’s a prime example of gaming-grade spatial tech with direct defence applications.

Blackshark.ai, the Austrian startup behind the digital globe you fly over in Microsoft’s Flight Simulator, raised a $20 million round A to develop and scale its replica-Earth tech.

3. Autonomy & Robotics

Physical AI and Robotics

UGVs and UAVs are increasingly used for surveillance, logistics, mine clearing, and other high-risk or repetitive defence tasks. Robots in defence settings require cutting edge computer vision and spatial awareness and rely on robust autonomy and ruggedised design to operate effectively in harsh and GPS-denied environments. 

ARX Robotics, a German startup, is emerging as a leader in this space with its modular, AI-powered unmanned ground vehicles designed for rapid deployment and interoperability with existing military infrastructure. Recently backed by the NATO Innovation Fund, ARX exemplifies how Europe is ramping up its investment in dual-use robotics to enhance defence readiness and reduce human exposure in dangerous operational zones.

Germany’s ARX Robotics secures €31M to scale AI-Powered Military Ground Systems across Europe

4. Computer Vision for ISR & Targeting

Computer vision — particularly spatial AI — is becoming a foundational layer in ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) and targeting systems.

Object Detection & Tracking

Autonomous vehicles, drones, and fixed surveillance systems increasingly rely on AI-powered object detection and tracking to classify vehicles, people, threats, and terrain features in real time. Many of these models are adapted or fine-tuned versions of commercial vision stacks originally developed for automotive, industrial, or security applications — a clear example of dual-use convergence.

Germany’s Helsing, builds real-time software for battlefield awareness, enabling platforms like fighter jets and drones to process sensor data onboard for immediate threat detection and classification. It’s one of Europe’s highest-profile defence AI startups and a key player in NATO-aligned ISR modernisation, partnering with industry and governments to connect existing and new hardware platforms with advanced AI.

Defence AI startup Helsing broke the record for European AI in 2023 raising a $223M Series B

Sensor Fusion

No single sensor offers complete reliability in battlefield conditions. That’s why sensor fusion — the integration of data from RGB cameras, thermal/infrared sensors, LiDAR, radar, and acoustic sources — is critical for enhancing accuracy and robustness in vision systems.

This layered sensing approach allows systems to operate in degraded conditions (e.g., night, fog, electronic warfare) and makes target detection and situational awareness far more resilient.

As vision AI continues to evolve, the military’s appetite for autonomous ISR systems - ones that can detect, classify, and act on sensor input with minimal human intervention - will only grow. Startups building robust, real-time computer vision solutions today are increasingly finding defence as a valuable customer segment. 

The rise of smaller, more frequent threats has led to increased sensor data and a battlefield that is more transparent and data-rich. This demands faster decision-making. To keep pace, information must be presented clearly and quickly — without overwhelming operators. This creates strong demand for situational awareness solutions like those from Distance Technologies.

Implications for Founders & Investors

As spatial technologies mature and defence demand intensifies, the opportunities — and complexities — for founders and investors at this intersection are growing.

Defence as a Beachhead

Even if a startup isn’t “defence-first,” the growing demand for spatial technologies in military contexts presents an additional go-to-market opportunity. Governments are often willing to fund cutting-edge, unproven technology with strategic upside. Which can help to de-risk a startup's early growth.

Challenges & Nuance

But it’s not without its challenges. Founders often have to navigate lengthy procurement cycles, export controls, and ethical considerations. Not all dual-use paths are aligned with every team’s mission or values. To call out procurement in particular, several people told us that this is usually the key thing that their startups need to navigate correctly in order to be successful. Although overall budgets are growing, accessing them is both extremely difficult and extremely important!

For investors, the sector is shifting. Defence is no longer seen as off-limits or niche — it’s increasingly viewed as a strategic and legitimate category, especially in the wake of geopolitical tension. As these worlds converge, the most compelling opportunities will come from teams who can bridge technical excellence with mission-driven execution, and who are fluent in both the startup and government languages.

Defence applications are not just about weapons - they’re about readiness, resilience, autonomy, and safety. Spatial computing can play a foundational role across all of these.

At FOV Ventures, we remain focused on investments that shape the future responsibly and we’re excited to collaborate with and learn more from both founders and other investors spending time at this pivotal intersection.

Some early stage startups in this space that we didn’t mention above include:

Vegvisir - It's VR for tank navigation.
TeleArmy - Remote vehicle controlling
Viseir - detection and visualisation for applications like de-mining
Array Labs - constellation flying together in a formation and creating 3D maps
Firesight Vision - drone to 3D mesh mapping of the battlefield
Stanhope - AI models for the realworld
SE3 Labs - spatial intelligence for the world around us
Roboneers - unmanned systems for combat effectiveness of future forces
Milrem Tech - enhancing combat effectiveness through robotics

If you’re building or investing at this frontier, we’d love to hear from you.

Note: A big thanks to Tisho Jenkut (Presto Ventures) and Rich Warwick (Distance Technologies) for providing feedback and additional thoughts for this post.

Welcome to Viewpoints, news and investment activity covering the next generation of computing - brought to you by FOV Ventures.

This Month:

• Our New investment Spogen.ai brings AI to operators of heavy machinery

• Dave Haynes on EUVC: the next trillion-dollar opportunity.

• Portfolio spotlight - ai|coustics hiring after €5M seed round

Dave Haynes, Petri Rajahalme, Sointu Karjalainen & David Ripert (FOV Ventures)

Last month’s Google I/O dropped some genuinely interesting hardware

Unlike the awkward Google Glass experiment, these new smart glasses actually make sense. You get Google Maps directions right in your field of vision, signs are translated in real-time as you look at them, and you can finally take photos by voice without shooting blind (something Meta's smart glasses can't do).

But the bigger picture is that Google is building a whole operating system Android XR specifically for these kinds of wearable devices, with other companies announcing they are building devices for Google's platform.

Xreal will launch the first consumer smart glasses running Android XR using Qualcomm's specialised processors and Samsung's Project Moohan headset will be a lighter and (apparently) more comfortable competitor to Apple's Vision Pro.

Lens overlay of Google Maps

Google’s Smart Glasses (Left) and Samsung’s Project Moohan (Right).

Google's previous smart glasses failed as hardware looking for a purpose. But when you combine this new hardware ecosystem with Google's premium AI subscription and promise to ship products this year, it signals the missing convergence - AI provides the contextual understanding that transforms expensive accessories into daily drivers.

At FOV Ventures, we've been positioning for this since inception. Google's infrastructure commitment means more platforms to target and clearer paths to scale for our portfolio companies and clear confirmation that this market is readying a move beyond early adopters.

Beyond consumer applications, spatial computing continues to expand into enterprise and defense too.

Meta and Anduril announced their partnership to build integrated XR products for military applications, mirroring what we're building in our portfolio – Distance Technologies just demonstrated their impressive XR Night Vision system in complete darkness deep underground in Helsinki, proving spatial computing works in mission-critical scenarios. Our recent investment in Spogen.ai applies thinking to heavy machinery and farming too, where €500,000 equipment needs intelligent interfaces that understand both the machine and its environment. To read more about that investment click below.

Why We Invested in Spogen.ai

Enormously expensive machines - tractors, harvesters, loaders - have evolved into technological marvels that can perform precision tasks within millimeters, yet can't explain to their human operators how to use them effectively. This disconnect is a significant market inefficiency hiding in plain sight.

viewpoints.fov.ventures/p/why-we-invested-in-spogen-ai

FOV NEWS

Dave Haynes on EUVC Podcast

FOV Partner Dave Haynes appeared on the EUVC podcast for a deep dive into "How AR Glasses, Multimodal AI, and Teleoperated Robots Will Reshape How We Work."

Dave Haynes on How AR Glasses, Multimodal AI, and Teleoperated Robots Will Reshape How We Work

A deep dive with Dave Haynes at about the convergence of AR, AI, and robotics.

www.eu.vc/p/dave-haynes-on-how-ar-glasses-multimodal

The conversation covered the convergence of AR, AI, and robotics - from audio-enhancing models and VR-powered robot control to wearable AI glasses unlocking new workflows. Dave discussed why multimodal models are changing daily AI interaction and what this means for investors eyeing the next trillion-dollar opportunity.

Distance Technologies Investor Event

We hosted LPs and investors at Distance Technologies' design center in Helsinki for hands-on demos of breakthrough XR tech for defense, automotive, and space industries. CEO Urho Konttori demonstrated how their technology projects directions onto car windshields and enables night vision in military vehicles, while FOV Partner Petri Rajahalme shared insights on the future across our 31 portfolio companies.

Javier Bello Ruiz Joins Edge Network

We welcome Javier Bello Ruiz to FOV's Edge Network.

Currently an Innovation Catalyst at ETH Zurich, Javier co-founded IMVERSE, launching three volumetric video solutions for live 3D telepresence powered by voxels, cloud, and AI/ML. With a background bridging Mixed Reality and Cognitive Neuroscience research at EPFL, he brings deep expertise in spatial computing, HCI, and XR technologies.

AWE 2025

FOV Partner Petri Rajahalme speaks on the investing in spatial computing panel at AWE alongside Amy LaMeyer from WXR Fund and Jonathan Carmel from Impact Venture Capital.

Meanwhile, our portfolio companies DoublePoint and Distance Technologies will be showcasing their tech, and Distance CEO Urho Konttori is delivering a keynote on "The Final Frontier of XR."

If you’re there too, come and say Hi!

FOV PORTFOLIO NEWS

• Kubos Semiconductors was named among the top 100 Future of Compute startups to watch by AlbionVC, listed alongside 68 growing and exciting UK tech companies. (more)

• Iconic was recognized among the top 100 AI startups globally by CB Insights - one of only a handful of gaming companies defining a new category of interactive worlds and experiences. (more)

• Flow Computing became a finalist in KPMG Tech Innovator 2025 in Finland, with CEO Timo Valtonen pitching how their PPU is redefining the future of high-performance computing on June 11. (more)

• Move AI welcomed AKA Virtual as their official distribution partner in Japan, bringing markerless motion capture technology to creators and studios across the region with full local support. (more)

• Starstuff CEO Hanna Toivonen was chosen as part of the all-female founder winners at London Stock Exchange & Tech Nordic Advocates, earning the opportunity to present at London Tech Week in June. (more)

• Ray Browser achieved 30% faster performance than Chrome in latest benchmarking tests, with their lean 14-person team delivering on building the fastest, most optimised browser for gaming on the web. (more)

• IXI was featured in Stuff magazine as "The Clark Kent of smart glasses" for their approach to vision enhancement without cameras, speakers, microphones, or AI - simply helping users see better. (more)

FOV JOBS

ai|coustics is hiring a Founding Sales Development Representative in Berlin - an exceptional opportunity to join the team building the quality layer for Voice AI.

With 500,000+ users, 2+ million audio files processed, and contracts with leading audio brands like Elgato and Deutsche Welle, they're solving the problem of poor audio quality that plagues everything from podcasts to video calls. Fresh off their €5M seed round, this is a chance to define a new category in Voice AI. more here

More Open Roles

• Atopia Space - Intern - Founder's Associate (m/f/d) in Metaverse Platform for Arts & Culture

• ai|coustics - Digital Marketing Specialist (Video + Social Focus), Machine Learning Engineer, Founding Sales Development Representative (SDR)

• Pixieray - Open Application, Full-Stack Mobile Engineer, Cleanroom Operator

• GEEIQ - Fullstack Engineer

• AQL Robotics - Laboratory Technician

Thanks for reading, see you next time!