Impact Circle: Europe's Bottega

​In December 2025, the EIF committed €1.25 billion of its own capital to ETCI 2, the second generation of the European Tech Champions Initiative. By March 2026 it had gone public with its full ambition: a €15 billion fund of funds, first close this summer, designed to back 100 growth-stage VCs and unlock €80 billion in European scaleup capital. Alongside it, the Savings and Investments Union Fund is capitalising major infrastructure providers across energy, transport and digital networks. The Scaleup Europe Fund is writing €100 million cheques directly into deeptech companies. Three of the largest capital mobilisation efforts in European history are running simultaneously.

​None of them answers the question of what they should collectively build.

​This session is the founding convening of Europe's Bottega: a co-investment and advisory platform concept, presented by Eleu, Paloneo and 21st Europe, where the family offices and LPs funding this capital architecture come together with the practitioners building Europe's transitions and the designers giving those transitions a coherent vision. Named for the Renaissance workshop where capital, craft, and vision occupied the same room, the Bottega's purpose is to develop the shared investment thesis that connects Europe's new capital vehicles to what they should actually be building, and to position the family offices in this room as co-architects of that connection rather than passive LPs within it.