SXSW 26: Europe still struggles to invest in deep tech

European investment firms do not have the appetite to invest in deep tech. In a discussion at the South by Southwest (SXSW) 2026 conference and festival in London, the co-founder of ARM and director at Amadeus Capital Partners, Herman Hauser, spoke about his disappointment that ARM was unable to list on the London Stock Exchange. He also discussed his further disappointment when UK investors lacked the foresight to see the potential of ARM, even after it had listed on Nasdaq.

Discussing ARM, which he said is Britain’s largest technology company, Hauser noted that its market capitalisation is double that of HSBC, which is the next biggest company on the London Stock Exchange.

“The saddest mistake is when we went back to all the big fund managers in the UK and said, ‘You made lots of money with ARM the last time, here is an opportunity to buy ARM again at a $50bn valuation’, they all laughed and said, ‘Wou must be joking at $50bn. What’s the chance of a UK or European-based company to grow from $50bn?’,” he said. “Well, now it's $410bn. They missed out on the biggest creation of wealth in the UK ever because their analysts and London failed to understand technology developments.”

Unlike the dotcom boom and crash of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Hauser sees artificial intelligence (AI) as a boom that is likely to make money for successful businesses. Looking at the deep tech investment opportunity, he said: “Some of the AI companies that we’re now seeing have gone from zero to hundreds of millions of revenue. This is not just ‘eyeballs’ like we heard about in the internet boom. This is real revenues leading to profits and fantastic growth for scale-ups.” 

Beyond Europe’s ability to think big in terms of deep tech investment, Hauser pointed to the challenge in hiring CEOs for UK and European startups, with the expertise to grow the business.

“In Silicon Valley – and we’ve done this a number of times –go to somebody at Apple or a Meta or Google who runs a billion-dollar division and say, ‘The startup needs your help.’ Think about getting somebody out of Rolls-Royce or Mercedes or some of our big companies in Europe. First, the culture isn’t there. People wouldn’t even look at their startup. Then they’re all locked up for six months or a year on their notice paper.” 

“So, out of the 12 unicorns I’ve been involved in, every one of them ended up in the US,” he added. “We’ve got to keep them in Europe.”

Hauser sees the €5bn European Innovation Council’s Scale-Up Europe Fund as the largest deep tech fund in Europe. “The ambition is to grow that from €5bn to €20bn, and maybe eventually €100bn.” 

Hauser also claimed that Europe is now giving investors in deep tech a better return than the US. “This is the first time in history that European venture capital gives better returns than American venture capital. That’s why a lot of money is flowing into Europe.”

Along with improvements in funding thanks to initiatives such as the Scale-Up Europe Fund and potentially bigger returns for investors, Hauser referenced the political climate in the US, which may tempt some Silicon Valley executives to look to Europe for their next move.

“A number of the basic conditions for creating large companies in Europe are present,” he added.