INTERVIEW: Robert Lacher, founding partner of venture capital outfit Visionaries Club (pictured), believes AI and a fresh approach to funding the next generation of tech start-ups could help Europe regain lost global influence and even reclaim its independence.

During MWC25 Barcelona, Lacher told Mobile World Live the region has a once in a generation opportunity to back emerging technology companies which will drive all manner of innovation, in turn fuelling GDP growth.

Lacher argued Europe had become somewhat risk averse and possibly even too comfortable, all at the cost of its independence.

He explained AI is one technology the region could employ to regain initiatives which led to the founding of companies including Spotify, “category leaders that became global” frontrunners.

Such history shows Lacher Europe has “all the ingredients” needed to become a global powerhouse, but said the region needs “to get more bold again, more hungry again and more risk taking again”.

Applying AI
It is a long-term play and one in which Lacher believes Europe could take a leading position in the “applications layer” of AI, pointing to the profits made in delivering mobile apps on top of Android and iOS platforms, and drawing a parallel between these and foundational models from Open AI and others.

Lacher believes Europe’s role in the industrial value chain could be the “biggest enablement globally for the application layer of AI”, because “everything that can be digitised will be digitised”. It leaves him confident the approach could cut what he regards as a productivity gap compared with the US.

But technology needs backing and Lacher of course believes Visionaries Club’s approach is unique because it combines the entrepreneurial spirit of fellow tech founders with that of more established, “family business entrepreneurs”.

Click here to find out why and hear Lacher’s thoughts on why visionaries do not always have to agree with each other.