The Next Web

Venture capital investment surged to a 10-quarter high of €108.3bn in Q1 2025, fuelled by artificial intelligence, which accounted for over  €44.6bn raised. In recent years, AI has felt like a money-printing machine. Investors, eager to avoid missing out on the next big thing, were quick to back almost any startup that mentioned AI in their pitch deck. The idea didn’t need to be particularly well-implemented or useful.

Startup wisdom is a new TNW series offering practical lessons from experts who’ve helped build great companies. This week, global traction strategist Nina Aziz Justin — founder of The Resilience Mentor — shares her approach to building resilience. In the startup world, we’re taught to obsess over metrics. Burn rate, CAC, MRR — they dominate the dashboards and drive the decisions. And yes, data matters. But there’s something quietly more essential that rarely gets the same spotlight: resilience.

The full-scale war has reshaped priorities for Ukraine’s tech sector. Innovative military technologies and advanced defence solutions are not only essential for the country’s security — they’re also among the most promising vectors for business growth. Ukrainian defence tech is tested directly on the battlefield, under the most challenging conditions.

Founders’ takes is a new series featuring expert insights from tech leaders transforming industries with artificial intelligence. In this edition, Lucas Spreiter, founder of German startup Venta AI, shares his vision of AI employees. Artificial intelligence is about to enable the most dramatic shift of the century: the transition from human labour to AI labour. In the coming years, businesses won’t just use AI as a tool — they’ll employ AI as real colleagues, handling critical workflows end-to-end.

Startups love hiring big business leaders into advisory and C-suite roles. These hires solve a common issue: as startups grow and look to compete with incumbents, they need some corporate talent to see them over the line. But big, established businesses have a different common issue. They’re too big, too established, and being outcompeted by the very companies that are hiring their talent. Right now, it’s the hare and the tortoise — but slow and steady isn’t winning the race this time.

Startup wisdom is a new TNW series offering practical lessons from experts who’ve helped build great companies. This week, Vivian Acquah, a certified inclusion strategist, workshop facilitator, and founder of Amplify DEI, shares her tips on ending meeting hangovers. So, you’re a leader. Your leadership involves managing a team while having both a defined direction and multiple essential goals that need completion. Your goal is to plan effectively and empower your team to achieve high performance.

In a recent interview with TNW, Jelle Prins, the mind behind Uber’s first app, shared his vision of a world transformed by autonomous vehicles. “Imagine getting into a car here in Amsterdam in the evening,” he mused, “and waking up the next morning in a mountain village in France for a day of snowboarding.” In his mind, self-driving is the next step in the evolution of mobility, and the question is not if but when it will land in Europe.

We want to share an important update with our contributors and community. After the FT Group acquired a majority stake in TNW in 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic severely disrupted TNW’s core revenue stream. Despite significant efforts in the years since, no sustainable path to commercial viability was found. In light of this and the broader financial outlook, the TNW Board has had to make the difficult decision to close its Events & Media division.

Founders’ takes is a new series featuring expert insights from tech leaders transforming industries with artificial intelligence. In this edition, Cem Ötkün, CEO and co-founder of startup scouting platform Bounce Watch, shares his views on how AI is reshaping investing. Venture capital, once built on networks and narratives, is now undergoing a structural shift. AI is no longer a futuristic add-on to the investment process — it’s becoming an operating system.

The entanglement of tech and politics has become impossible to ignore — especially in the United States, where the lines between Silicon Valley and Washington are rapidly dissolving. At President Trump’s inauguration, the CEOs of Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet took prominent seats — even ahead of cabinet nominees — an unmistakable sign of how closely US tech giants are now intertwined with national policy agendas.