Dawn Capital

Three Dawn must-reads to wrap the week: 🏉 Bondaval founder Tom Powell spoke to Richard Tyler at The Times this week about his journey from England sevens captain to reshaping the way credit teams manage risk globally. 🚀 Runware was featured as a top ten trending software vendor by Ramp, as it scales its AI inference platform for image, video and audio models, delivering unmatched price performance. ✒️ Evgenia Plotnikova and Andrea G. wrote a deep-dive on B2G: government priorities, what that means for building a giant B2G business, and what we’re looking for in the space at Dawn. All links in comments below!

“As software and technology have eaten industry after industry, government has often remained a bastion of archaic inefficiency, legacy systems, and technological stagnation. Finally, national operating systems are being rewritten. But this isn’t a classic B2B venture.” “Given a broadly low technology maturity across our governments, we believe generational opportunities exist across several layers of government. New operating systems are set to win and rewire the heart of our nations. Never has software had a grander or more patriotic ambition.” Evgenia Plotnikova and Andrea G. have undertaken a deep-dive into B2G: government priorities, what that means for building a giant B2G business, and what we’re looking for in the space at Dawn. 👇Link to full piece and the companies already shaping the space below

“As software and technology have eaten industry after industry, government has often remained a bastion of archaic inefficiency, legacy systems, and technological stagnation. Finally, national operating systems are being rewritten. But this isn’t a classic B2B venture.” “Given a broadly low technology maturity across our governments, we believe generational opportunities exist across several layers of government. New operating systems are set to win and rewire the heart of our nations. Never has software had a grander or more patriotic ambition.” Evgenia Plotnikova and Andrea G. have undertaken a deep-dive into B2G: government priorities, what that means for building a giant B2G business, and what we’re looking for in the space at Dawn. 👇Link to full piece and the companies already shaping the space below

Attention, builders: Upstarts is heading back to London in two weeks, and we'd love to see you there 💂♂️ Join us on Feb 17 for a live chat with Synthesia founder Victor Riparbelli on how he's taking his AI unicorn from Upstart to Grown-up, with real revenue to match 📈 Free to attend, thanks to our partners Dawn Capital, Taylor Wessing UK and Vanta 🤝 Apply to RSVP below 👇 luma.com/9ttwn4d6

This weekend we hosted the Black Forest Labs and AIEngine Hackathon, where we gave our office over to 100 hackers... Our latest investment Runware powered the Generative Media Layer and offered access to Black Forest Labs models and more. Thank you to Flaviu R., Ryan Kerry, Shariq Manji and Sarah Impey, who shared their insights and helped the participants to express their creativity. The hackers were fueled by Anthropic and nutritious meals - and yes, some pizza. This allowed them to hit the finish line and take home $20,000 worth of NVIDIA GPUs. We're delighted to be the hub of innovation in London. If you would like to be part of AIEngine in the future, connect with Zoe (Ziwen) Qin! Some highlights courtesy of Adam Isfendiyar below 👇

'Micro apps' are having a moment: lightweight, hyper-specific tools built with AI to solve one problem, for one person or a small team. Dominic-Madori Davis has taken a look for TechCrunch at what’s driving the rise of these apps, and why they’re often faster, and more practical, to build than to buy. Dom interviewed Shamillah Bankiya, who shared that she’s building a podcast translation web app for personal use. We think this signals a broader shift, which Shamillah wrote about in her blog post last year on vibe-coding and the future of software agencies: time-to-tool collapses, software gets more personal, and more ephemeral demand expands when building becomes radically cheaper. Link to Dom’s article and our vibecoding blog post in the comments 👇

I’ve previously spoken about politics being my first love, and as the world leaders head to Davos this week, I’m grateful to DLD Conference for giving me a chance in Munich last Friday to take a step back and examine where Europe is, the geopolitical context, and what that means for those building and scaling winners. My push to the audience, and now to all of you: 🌍 The one shift that changes the game is… Deglobalisation. We are increasingly looking inward. Technology, data, supply chains and capital are fragmenting, and AI is accelerating that fragmentation. In a deglobalising world, value doesn’t come just from global platforms but also from AI applications embedded into real-world systems, often local, regulated or simply fiercely looking to protect their competitive edge. Think energy, finance, healthcare and infrastructure. At Dawn Capital, this is where we invest: software and AI that sit at the core of mission-critical systems. When AI is applied inside complex systems, complexity becomes a moat, not a barrier. The last tech cycle rewarded platforms. Deglobalisation rewards systems; and systems are where Europe is strong. 🇪🇺 Where Europe loses momentum is… Scaling. We know that Europe doesn’t lose at ideas. Where it does lose is at conviction during the scale-up phase. We build world-class AI applications and technical companies, but as they move from early traction to global expansion, three things break: 👉 Risk appetite drops 👉 Leadership talent fragments 👉 And adoption by large customers moves too slowly In the US, a company with real AI adoption is told: ‘Go win the world.’ In Europe, it’s told: ‘Don’t overextend.’ That difference compounds. When we are winning we must lean in. At growth stage, the job is not *just* capital efficiency, it’s momentum. Europe systematically under-invests in momentum. 🗓️ One thing Europe should do in the next 12 months is… Buy innovation. In a deglobalising world, Europe must fix demand, not just supply. The fastest way to create global winners in AI is large, credible early customers. If governments and corporations committed to spending 10% of procurement on high-growth European AI-native scaleups, the flywheel would change immediately. Nothing scales AI applications faster than trust and procurement is institutional trust. 🙏 Thank you to my fellow panellists, two brilliant investors Marie-Helene Ametsreiter at Speedinvest and Lina Wenner at firstminute capital, our expert moderator  Max Laemmle, and of course Steffi Czerny and the fantastic DLD Conference team for bringing us together. #AI #DLD #DLDConference #Davos #WEF26 Hubert Burda Media