Moat or Museum? Carving a Future for Hard Tech in Europe.
The hosts
What is this Ripple about?
We'll debate whether European industry and hard tech has become a moat or a museum.
Is Europe's industrial base a real structural advantage or a comfortable story we tell ourselves while the US ships capital and China ships hardware?
Why this topic is timely and urgent in 2026
The bottleneck for solving hard problems in Europe usually isn't the tech. European industrials can be procurement-averse (demand endless pilots) and at times avoid being a startup's first reference customer. This truly begs the question of why our own industrial champions don't buy enough from our own startups.
For example, physical AI needs more money, for longer, and European funds write smaller cheques than the US. Is the honest answer that the breakout companies will get built here and scaled elsewhere?
Can Europe compete on hardware? Or is the only defensible layer the deployment/software/domain-expertise wrapper on top of someone else's metal?
We at Kvanted and pluto are heavily involved in the European industrial space; and would love to openly discuss how we can grow a more strong and competitive Europe.
Who would get the most value from attending this Ripple?
Founders, investors, policy makers, other ecosystem movers... All those that believe in the future of re-industrialisation in Europe.