The Drop 2026 · Wednesday 16 September · Malmö
What the Ripples said
74 sessions
01 Energy and the grid
The grid sits half idle while new users queue for yearsAcross 17 sessions on energy and the grid, the quickest capacity was the kind already installed, and the one buyer paying for speed wanted its own.Read the overview →Raw Green: The 380 Exajoule OpportunityThe grid runs at half capacity while investors chase new powerFrancesco De Lieto · Emma Mee · Rushad NanavattySmarter power: Negawatts before megawattsThe grid's spare capacity is real, and hard to sellRushad Nanavatty · Duncan TurnerEnergy Power Plays: Who Owns the Stack?AI's grid problem comes down to a few dozen peak hoursDinesh Ganesan · Ethan SohnSoftware eating the grid, finallyTo sell grid software, make it something the operator can capitaliseDavid Delfassy · Moritz MüllerPT1 Live: Vehicles as Infrastructure – Batteries on WheelsA car that is free forever, as long as you always plug it inBryony Cooper · Claire MillerEnergy bottlenecks in the age of AI: fix the grid, or build around it?Data centres want their own power, with the grid as a fallbackAndrea Gluscevic · Inês Amorim RochaGeothermal Tech post-Fervo IPOOne geothermal investor hopes every acre ends up worthlessTorsten Kolind · Sarah BlackCracking Geothermal GrowthGeothermal's growth depends on oil majors that have walked away beforeDavid Babson · Jamie BeardAI’s Power Problem Moves Off EarthSpace data centres fall between venture money and infrastructure debtPatrick Tucci · Karol SzubstarskiEnergy Efficiency or Uptime First?For factory buyers, decarbonisation is a side effectJan Palasinski · Adele UnnebergNo Time or Energy to Waste: Powering IndustryFactories going electric keep the gas boiler tooBenjamin Wochner · Birgit HandlMaking Clean Tech Bankable: Industrial HeatNo bank will finance a 15-year payback on industrial heatGeorge Harris · Daniel GalisWater: A Constraint on Industrial Growth?Water can stop a factory and still not close the saleSteve Kloos · Megan GerrytsFinding the Western Edge in Battery TechEurope bought China's battery machines but not the know-howVera Kunz · Noah SumaitThe Electric Stack: Who Wins?Europe's likeliest seat in the electric stack is the control layerDaniel Uusitalo · Jonas BergqvistIs Resilience a Lie We Tell Ourselves?A fleet of 100,000 energy assets can fail like one power plantTill Stenzel · Katharina BeitzThe New Nuclear Podcast: Sovereign power – nuclear as strategic European infrastructureEurope already has the fuel for nuclear sovereigntySam Floy · Klaus Nyengaard · Anton Steen · Johan Christian Sollid
02 Geopolitics
Europe stands up for sovereignty and still buys on priceAcross 13 Ripples on geopolitics, founders and investors agreed Europe must secure its own launch, batteries, minerals and power, and struggled to say who pays the premium.Read the overview →The Geopolitics of SpaceInvestors voted for European launch and almost none would fund itNick Gosen · Paul EisenbergBuilding a battery market outside of ChinaEurope wants its own batteries, and its buyers will not pay extraSofie Käll · Burhan PisavadiMine or Be MinedEurope's raw-materials problem is price, and China sets itLasse Köhler · Johan AttbyHow does the mobility industry adapt to geopolitical challenges nowadays?Local car parts cost more, and nobody knows if buyers will payDaniel Wu · Aurianne LegrisSpace: investing in the next frontierEvery space thesis at this table ran into the cost of launchJordan Billiald · Elena BallesterosFood(Tech) Sovereignty in a Fractured WorldCheap food is already being paid for, just not at the tillAlessio D'Antino · Daniel Skaven RubenFeedstock sovereignty in Europe and the USEurope arrives with targets, Japan and the US with contractsIris ten Have · Danielle JosephEU strategy to electrify independentlyGas is bought every year, solar panels every 30 yearsVincent Gregoir · Shravan ShahEuropean Sovereignty PlaybookSovereignty start-ups win contracts before the tender is writtenMaxi Pethö-Schramm · Birthe RossReshoring: Intent, Paradox, What Comes NextEurope will not win reshoring by copying China's factoriesBeatrix von Schröder · Philipp EmigAmid Market Backlash: Pitching Climate 2026Seven in 20 pitch decks now say climate or carbon, down from all 20Philip Specht · Hugo RauchFlexibility in the Age of Energy VolatilityEurope's power price swings are paying traders best so farMariana Costa · Tomas KemtysDe-risking the Dragon, embracing the ElephantIndia is too chaotic to repeat China's export playbookDivya Murthy · Mark Kahn
03 Funding the build-out
Financiers want to see the tenth plant before they pay for the firstAcross 19 Ripples, podcasts and Expert Sessions, founders, lenders and LPs met the same gap between venture and infrastructure capital, and split on whether money or language keeps it open.Read the overview →Infra-tech: New definitions & funding modesThe investor for first-of-a-kind infrastructure is still missingShakil Karim · Toba SpiegelClimate Drift: What the FOAK is going on? What it takes to mass deployProject finance hears risk when founders say 'first of a kind'Skander Garroum · Julian Ryba-WhiteDon't Look Down: Surviving the FOAK CliffFounders and VCs push the first-plant problem down the roadPeter Hirsch · Michael Zöllner · Isabela Dobbs · Sara SimondsStructuring for Scale – Solving Scale-UpA lender liked the technology and still paused the dealAdelaide Morphett · Amy ZhaoFinancing the Energy TransitionA climate lender sizes the loan as if the offtake might walk awayBailey Morrow · Rainer SternfeldBeyond the Pilot Who Will Finance the Future?Nobody wants to take the leap of faith on green cement plantsJuan Nieto · Liliana CruzInfratech: Europe's Next Big WaveMoney is only one brake on Europe's infratech start-upsBorja Gumuzio Morenés · Nick de la ForgeMoat or Museum? Carving a Future for Hard Tech in EuropeEurope keeps its incumbents alive and its start-ups in pilotsSoo Min Hong · Maria WasastjernaCorporates Investing TogetherRival corporates on the cap table can make a start-up saferGuy Yavin · Johannes Fors KällströmUnlocking Hidden InnovationA steel furnace accident became a hydrogen spin-out 20 years laterAndrea Siciliani · Leonardo MassaRooted in Change: Industrial enzymes – nature's building blocksBiozeroc's hardest cement problem became the platform it licensesJan Christoph Bohnerth · Liv AnderssonEngineering the invisibleFor MOFs, discovery matters less than delivery by the tonneVincent Brillault · Abhiram KannanDeep tech IP roll ups & investment consolidation: A New Hope?Buyers of failed climate hard tech want the red flags mostSilvan Aeschlimann · Ben MurphyNew Wave: We have the solutions. We 'just' need to scale themClimate founders are chefs who now have to make Big MacsHugo Rauch · Jerome TernynckBack to the roots of VC: deploying capital boldly and early onPre-seed climate investors now want pilot plans and revenueAlina Klarner · Jarno van den HeuvelMental models for deeptech allocatingDeep tech has a translation problem, from founder to LPSam Cash · Kyle McEneaneyRadical impact — open source, evergreen investing, and rethinking ventureOwning nothing let 2050 take over the running of two other fundsMarie EkelandData driven investing in fundsA venture track record is reliable about when the GP retiresEvan FinkelEUVC Podcast: What LPs look at apart from track recordLGT uses track record as a filter and bets on the peopleAndreas Munk Holm · Thomas Kristensen
04 Nature
Repairing nature pays only when someone owns the lossInvestors and founders at thirteen sessions on farms, food, oceans, cities and carbon found fixes that work, and kept stalling on who pays when the benefit is shared.Read the overview →What Nature Markets Need to ScaleTwo nature VCs underwrite nature markets at zero and hope to be wrongEd Thorne · Kevin WebbNatural Solutions: Valuable or Money Wasted?Nature finds buyers when people are desperate enough to payJeff Johnson · Kyle TeameyClimate Risk & the Insurability CrisisStorm-proof a house and some insurers raise the premiumLaura Fox · Michael LangguthOcean tech: too early or mis-funded?Ocean tech is mostly mis-funded, and seaweed farming is too earlyJerome Ternynck · James LindsayBuilding Climate-Resilient CitiesResilient cities need little new technology and a lot of moneyMatt Stanley · Tanja HuohvanainenConventional agriculture: the efficiency mythWhoever finances the farmer decides how the land is farmedSanne Bootsma · Erica van EeghenFood to Fashion to Food: Bio Closed-LoopInsulation made from textile waste works, and sits in a warehouseNic Gorini · Michelle de RijkFunctionality shift b2b ingredient reinventedFood tech's new pitch is cost or health, and health takes timeMatteo Leonardi · Bodil SidénFood investment – the next wave (the Tsunami)The patients who most need food as medicine cannot afford itJohan Jörgensen · Björn ÖsteBite-Size Climate Tech: The Science That Has to ShipPhytoform's edited potatoes look boring, which is the pointLydia Chen · Mónica Larrazábal · William Pelton · Nicolas KralFinancial viability of carbon removalCarbon removal will not pay until buyers are allowed to count itRobert HöglundClimate Repair and Timescales for ActionSolar geoengineers are not allowed to release even one kilogramHugh Hunt · Lukas GastFoodTech Weekly: Hot Takes – How to Raise Capital In A Down MarketIt took ten years of meetings before the IFC backed OmnivoreAlex Shandrovsky · Tomas Turner · Mark Kahn · Divya Murthy
05 Labour
The jobs short of people are the hardest to hand to machinesAt The Drop's twelve sessions on labour, investors and founders found people scarcest in fields, on building sites and in care, and AI most useful on a screen.Read the overview →Can Robots secure Europe’s Food System?Farm robots make venture sense where the harvest never stopsJulius Strauss · Philip StarkAI is finally making DeepTech venturableCan AI fit deep tech into a ten-year venture fund?Michelle Robson · Lisa SchneiderAfter SaaS: The Physical DecadeAI trims hardware design time but leaves the capital bill intactMark Windeknecht · Pina FritzHardware & Biology: Durable Moats Beyond Code'At some point, someone needs to put something in the ground'Max Lebeau · Isabel ZhangWinning Strategies in Physical AIRobots sell when the customer faces an impossible deadlineRaj Kapoor · Sean PetersenIndustry 4.0's Productivity ParadoxIndustry 4.0 put robots in old factories and waited for productivityHillel Zand · Jan MarchewskiPhysical AI Unlocking scalable heavy industryNo contractor would trial its robot dozer, so the start-up bought oneGemma Bloemen · Camilla DolanMore Work for Mother 2.0If one person can do it, the woman does itMalin Frithiofsson · Greta BraunRepurposing Europe’s Automotive EngineEurope's car engineers have skills to spare and nothing to aim atGeorge Georgiadis · Skander GarroumDoes the Green Economy Have an Address?Green start-ups are born in hubs and choose their address at scaleGosbert Chagula · Pippa GawleyHope comes from unleashing young ambitionAmbition is learned, Caeden Noël says, and FR8 is built to teach itCaeden NoëlWhat future will the boldest aspire to build?Climate cannot outbid AI for talent, so it must tell a better storyAnna Ottosson · Jonny Everett