Scaling Europe

Philipp Schröder, Co-founder and CEO at 1KOMMA5°: Delivering the cheapest and cleanest electricity in the world

1KOMMA5° is working to deliver the cheapest and cleanest electricity in the world, at a time when energy is becoming one of the biggest questions behind the AI boom. Philipp Schröder, Co-founder and CEO at 1KOMMA5°, has grown the company from home electrification into one of Europe’s most important energy players. It is already managing one gigawatt of capacity, with a much larger ambition: making millions of homes part of the energy infrastructure Europe now needs. The Scaling Europe show is presented by Deel - check them out here: https://get.deel.com/ruynb7o4lfjk Sponsors: Mishcon: https://www.mishcon.com/pop-ups/scaling-europe Chargebee: https://www.chargebee.com/events/beelieve/london/2026 SurrealDB: https://surrealdb.com/ Airwallex: https://www.airwallex.com/uk?utm_source=other&utm_medium=partner_referral&utm_campaign=v01_emea_multi_ib_dg_prtmk_mofu_scalingeurope Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction 0:28 - 1KOMMA5° 2:27 - Business model 5:30 - Subscription model 13:11 - Virtual power plant 16:27 - One gigawatt of managed capacity 21:11 - IPO plans 24:38 - Energy and AI 27:21 - Europe vs NASDAQ 29:32 - International expansion 33:25 - Building from Germany 36:03 - Entrepreneurs and politics 39:08 - Taking pushback 41:24 - Energy abundance in Europe 43:41 - What governments are missing 47:38 - Lessons from Tesla 48:54 - The future of energy companies

Jonathan Low, CEO at Scope: BREAKING: Scope raised $20m

Scope is building AI for the people who inspect the physical world, from factories and industrial equipment to the assets companies rely on every day. Jonathan Low is CEO at Scope, and the company has just raised $20m led by Index Ventures after growing more than 10x since relaunching last year. Much of this work still runs on pen, paper, Word and Excel, and Scope is turning inspection work into usable data about the physical world. The Scaling Europe show is presented by Deel - check them out here: https://get.deel.com/ruynb7o4lfjk Sponsors: Mishcon: https://www.mishcon.com/pop-ups/scaling-europe Chargebee: https://www.chargebee.com/events/beelieve/london/2026 SurrealDB: https://surrealdb.com/ Airwallex: https://www.airwallex.com/uk?utm_source=other&utm_medium=partner_referral&utm_campaign=v01_emea_multi_ib_dg_prtmk_mofu_scalingeurope Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction 0:25 - The inspection industry 1:34 - How Scope works 2:20 - Scope’s $20m round 3:08 - Growing more than 10x 5:08 - Scaling to $15m ARR 8:14 - Why inspection is ready for AI 10:06 - Building close to customers 13:13 - International expansion 18:48 - Hiring talent in London

Manuel Silva Martinez, GP at Mouro Capital: BREAKING: Mouro Capital closed $400m fund

Mouro Capital is a fintech-focused venture firm investing at the intersection of financial services and technology. Manuel Silva Martinez is a GP at Mouro Capital, and they just announced a new $400m fund backed by Banco Santander, giving the firm more capital to back fintech entrepreneurs across the US, Europe and Latin America. Mouro’s thesis has stayed close to financial services, but the opportunity now looks much broader as AI pulls more horizontal companies into the category. The Scaling Europe show is presented by Deel - check them out here: https://get.deel.com/ruynb7o4lfjk Sponsors: Mishcon: https://www.mishcon.com/pop-ups/scaling-europe Chargebee: https://www.chargebee.com/events/beelieve/london/2026 SurrealDB: https://surrealdb.com/ Airwallex: https://www.airwallex.com/uk?utm_source=other&utm_medium=partner_referral&utm_campaign=v01_emea_multi_ib_dg_prtmk_mofu_scalingeurope Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction 0:28 - Mouro Capital’s new $400m fund 0:52 - The history of Mouro Capital 2:33 - How AI fits into fintech 4:04 - Raising from Banco Santander 5:55 - Liquidity and exits 8:15 - Creating liquidity in Europe 11:00 - Growth in fintech 13:10 - InsurTech 15:55 - New markets in financial services 17:49 - The next generation of fintech founders 19:18 - Mouro Capital’s portfolio

Martin Mignot, Partner at Index Ventures: How founders are building and leading companies in the AI era

European founders are still going to the US earlier than ever, but AI is now changing how the companies they build actually operate. Martin Mignot, Partner at Index Ventures, looks at this shift from inside a global firm working with founders on both sides of the Atlantic. For founders and CEOs, AI is becoming much bigger than a tooling question. The challenge is to rethink how the company works before the old structure slows them down. The Scaling Europe show is presented by Deel - check them out here: https://get.deel.com/ruynb7o4lfjk Sponsors: Mishcon: https://www.mishcon.com/pop-ups/scaling-europe Chargebee: https://www.chargebee.com/events/beelieve/london/2026 SurrealDB: https://surrealdb.com/ Airwallex: https://www.airwallex.com/uk?utm_source=other&utm_medium=partner_referral&utm_campaign=v01_emea_multi_ib_dg_prtmk_mofu_scalingeurope Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction 0:32 - European founders going global earlier 2:12 - How AI is changing company building 3:02 - CEOs learning from San Francisco 4:39 - Founder mode and AI leadership 7:20 - How Index helps founders through the shift 9:48 - Why Index invested in Anthropic 13:04 - Index’s AI strategy 17:17 - Assessing AI founders 21:07 - Explore vs exploit in AI 22:19 - Index’s AI portfolio 24:27 - Why Index operates as one global team 27:24 - The trade-offs of a global partnership

James Regan, CEO of Oriole Networks: Building radically faster networks for AI

AI data centres are running into a network bottleneck as models demand more bandwidth, more connected processors and dramatically more power. James Regan, CEO of Oriole Networks, thinks the industry is still trying to scale architectures that fundamentally do not work at the size AI is heading towards. Oriole’s approach replaces electrical packet switches with photonic switching technology designed to move data optically across the data centre, with the long-term goal of connecting a million XPUs in a single hop while cutting power consumption at the same time. The Scaling Europe show is presented by Deel - check them out here: https://get.deel.com/ruynb7o4lfjk Sponsors: Mishcon: https://www.mishcon.com/pop-ups/scaling-europe Chargebee: https://www.chargebee.com/events/beelieve/london/2026 SurrealDB: https://surrealdb.com/ Airwallex: https://www.airwallex.com/uk?utm_source=other&utm_medium=partner_referral&utm_campaign=v01_emea_multi_ib_dg_prtmk_mofu_scalingeurope Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction 0:27 - What Oriole Networks is building 1:48 - Why optical switching matters for AI 4:50 - The network bottleneck problem 7:22 - Prism Ultra and scaling AI infrastructure 10:24 - Industry reaction to Prism Ultra 12:49 - US vs European deep tech investors 16:07 - What James does differently as a repeat founder 20:27 - Spinning companies out of universities 24:15 - Why founders should avoid weak early deals 25:53 - Recognising bad VC deals as a repeat founder