The Sovereign AI Race Is On: What are the opportunities for founders and investors?
The Anthropic export ban has ignited debate amongst European founders and investors. Are we about to lose access to the most cutting-edge US foundational AI models? It's time to unpack the implications for funders and investors.
Too few people fully understand the implications of "sovereign AI" and the technologies surrounding it, especially if entrepreneurs and investors want to build in this space.
'Sovereign AI' is increasingly becoming a heady and complex combination of defence, national security, industrial resilience, access to compute, energy, chips, capital, and strategic autonomy.
But while governments, investors and the media talk it up, the term can mean different things to different people. Where can domestic AI models take over from US foundational ones? Do we have enough national compute? What about the future of high-performance chips for training and inference? How do we balance this with the use of US and Chinese tech platforms?
For entrepreneurs and investors, the stakes are significant, but the debate requires a deeper understanding than many discussions currently provide.
Pathfounders has convened a panel discussion at Google Cloud's office on 16 July to explore what Sovereign AI really means, where the commercial opportunities are emerging, and what the UK and Europe need to build.
Attendees will learn
• What "sovereign AI" means today
• Why sovereign AI is becoming a geopolitical issue
• Where the commercial opportunities are emerging
• How founders can position themselves
• Where industrial AI fits
• How compute, chips, quantum, and photonics are reshaping the economics
• What investors are looking for
• How Europe and the UK can compete
This event is for founders, investors, policymakers, operators and anyone trying to understand where AI, capital and strategic technology are heading next.
Agenda
18:00 — Registrations & Networking
18:30 — Panel Discussion
Understanding Sovereign AI
19:15 — Speed Tables
Structured roundtable discussions meet speed networking
→ Join topic-led discussions
→ Rotate tables each round
→ Meet a new group of peers every time
20:15 — Open Networking
Continue the conversations
21:00 — Close
Speakers
Speakers include:
• Joséphine Kant, Head of Ventures at the UK Sovereign AI Unit, who will bring a policy perspective on how the UK can strategically back important AI companies.
• Ben Peters, Co-Founder and CEO of Cogna, a leading AI company building for physical industries, who will explore how AI is moving beyond software into manufacturing, infrastructure and the industrial economy.
• Vaysh Kewada, Co-Founder and CEO of Salience Labs, which is building low-latency optical switches to solve interconnect for next-generation AI, will discuss why the hardware layer is central to any serious conversation about sovereign capability.
• Carlos Munoz Ferrandis - Co-founder & COO at Alinia AI, a company developing runtime regulatory guardrails for high-stakes AI Agents. Carlos will discuss the challenge of ensuring runtime compliance of autonomous agents at scale in different jurisdictions.
• Mike Butcher - The Founder & Editor of Pathfounders will moderate the panel.
Thank You To Our Event Partners
Why Attend
Understand what Sovereign AI actually is and where the commercial opportunities are emerging
Meet a highly curated group of founders, investors, and experienced operators
Experience structured networking that actually leads to meaningful connections
Important Event Information
Physical ID Checks: For campus safety, mandatory physical ID verification using a government-issued ID, is required for all guests at check-in.
Registrations will close 1 hour after the event starts and latecomers will not be allowed in after that time.
The registration desk operates on a first-come, first-served basis. Once the venue capacity is reached, the registration desk will close, and latecomers will be informed that the event is at full capacity.
About Pathfounders
Pathfounders is a Europe-based but globally minded, independent tech media outlet covering tech entrepreneurship, investment, and their consequences in the age of AI, with a sharp editorial lens. It combines journalism, curated events, and a membership network to connect the founders, investors and policymakers shaping the next wave of innovation. It focuses on the UK and Europe, but also strays into global tech issues regularly. Pathfounders is edited by Mike Butcher, previously an editor on TechCrunch for 18 years.