Welcome to 2026 & Why Hardware Rules Software - Silicon Roundabout Ventures, Jan 2026 Bulletin
Our "Build in Public" LP update, with fresh fund highlights, community events, and deeptech market insights. Written by our AI. Edited by our humans.
In This Edition
Upcoming Events: Notice of the team’s attendance at Super Return in Saudi Arabia on January 26–27, 2026.
2025 Year in Review: An analysis of the European tech “inflection point,” arguing that value is migrating from software/AI hype back to the “Physical Layer:” Next-Gen Computing, Energy Transition, and Strategic Resilience (Defense/Space).
Performance Snapshot
GP Personal Update: Announcement of Natalia joining the team as the new Head of Community and Operations.
A reminder of what we are about
Silicon Roundabout Ventures is a SuperAngel Seed fund in the UK investing in European Deep Tech startups. It leverages their community of 15,000 entrepreneurs and engineers, through which the team previously attracted, selected and helped launch 33 Deep Tech and Big Data startups now valued at over £6 Billion.
The fund is backed by top-tier VC Molten Ventures (LSE:GROW) and exited founders, engineers and execs: including ex googlers, amazonians and from 4 unicorns.
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📅 Upcoming Events and Community Updates
We’ll be at Super Return in Saudi Arabia on the 26th and 27th Jan. If you’re a Founder, LP, or anyone else there and interested in catching up, reach out!
2025 Year in review: Europe’s Frontier Tech Opportunity
As we enter 2026, the European technology ecosystem faces a generational inflection point. While traditional venture capital remains fixated on a “late-cycle” software and AI hype, the next industrial revolution belongs to the Physical Layer:
Hardware Rules Software
The “ICT Revolution” was built on infrastructure and only in the last 20 years lived through a phase of “Software eating the world”. Many founders and investors believed some form of runaway recursion in AI would generate exponential progress and value in the next few years, but their beliefs are hitting a wall of physics: where general-purpose computing can no longer satisfy exponential ML energy demands. If 2023 and 2024 were the years when the “hype” exploded, 2025 was the year cracks started to appear.
In this context we see it just a matter of time before real value migrates back to deeptech infrastructure, specifically across three “arms races”:
Next-Gen Computing: Moving beyond standard silicon toward novel architectures and even new forms of computation like quantum computing.
Energy Transition: Leveraging collapsing costs in solar, wind, and battery storage to move us toward “electro-state” led economies.
Strategic Resilience: A new era of “dual-use” defense and space technology, which in Europe is particularly felt as the company scrambles for sovereignty in the area.
Addressing the “Seed Gaps”
Despite growing interest, deeptech founders face a “hidden capital drought”. Current European VC is hampered by four specific gaps:
The Allocation Trap: 31% of deeptech funding is cannibalized by AI software, leaving hardware stagnant.
The Sovereignty Trap: 65% of European defense-tech funding currently originates from US investors.
The Spinout Tunnel Vision: Funds focus on university transfers, often ignoring the 66% of “wild” founders coming from industry.
The Time Fear: Investors prioritize quick software markups over the longer R&D cycles of deeptech, which often yields superior long-term performance.
The Path Forward
We see the story repeat: the best long-term rewards don’t come overnight. Bucking the trend and betting on truly long-term transformative cycles is where we want to play as a fund and as a community. In that respect, we believe that the future will be won by “vertical integration fanatics” and “hardware hackers” who can move atoms at the speed of bits.
By writing super-early cheques and leveraging technical communities, our objective for our new investment cycle starting in 2026 is to be the enabling first believer in the next ASML-level global leader to come out of Europe.
Stay tuned for our follow on research article on the specific trends we are seeing, our “build in public” manifesto, and the opportunity we seek to capture in Venture Capital.
Portfolio Updates & Public Announcements
Our public portfolio tracker: https://siliconroundabout.ventures/portfolio
Leveraging our community to spot the very best of Europe’s talents before they go “global”, and write that super-early cheque that fuels their launch.
➕ New Announcements
No new announcements.
Performance Snapshot
Note: We do not book non-priced rounds as markups.
Silicon Roundabout Ventures LP II
Stay tuned for updates :)
Silicon Roundabout Ventures LP
Vintage: 2023 / Investments: 21 (closed)
Key Deeptech Areas: Future of Computing, Energy, and Defence
Fund Size: £5M
GP’s Angel Portfolio
Vintage: 2020 / Investments: 17
TVPI: 2X / DPI: 0.1X
Highlight Companies: Ori.co, Aegieq.com, Kaizan.ai, Nanusens.com, rnwl.co.uk, Ecosync, Axiom.ai
Community “Virtual” Portfolio
Vintage: 2016 / Companies considered: 26
Method for selection: Silicon Roundabout community pitch winners until the beginning of the GP investment activity
Simulated TVPI: 6-6.9X
GP Personal Update
A new beginning! I wanted to welcome Natalia as our Head of Community and Operations :)
She’s scaled a tech community in the CEE region and turned it a profitable business, before moving to Oslo and become a Sigma Square exec.
With her on board, we can focus on truly scaling up the operations with the Silicon Roundabout community and serve the most talented and promising deeptech founders in Europe as they launch their global titans.
Onwards!
LP-Only Section Begins