Denmark announced new copyright rules that give citizens explicit rights over their body, voice, and facial features - effectively making it illegal to create or distribute AI-generated deepfakes without consent. The move is significant: most jurisdictions, including the EU under its AI Act, have focused on labelling obligations rather than direct personal rights. In the US, state-level “deepfake laws” exist in California, Texas and New York, but these tend to cover narrow areas like political ads or pornography. Denmark’s approach is broader, embedding likeness and voice into copyright - recognition synthetic media threatens identity as much as reputation.
IPOs / Public
Visma (Norwegian enterprise software) picked London for its IPO, provisionally. Valued ~€19B in 2023 after a private sale, 70% owned by Hg Capital.
Amazon to invest £40B in the UK, reinforcing its role as one of the country’s largest private employers.
Nvidia reclaimed the crown as the world’s most valuable company, overtaking Microsoft.
Meta poached three engineers from OpenAI’s Zurich office – the same team OpenAI had taken from Google earlier this year. As mentioned last week, compensation packages reportedly exceeded $100M across salary, RSUs and bonuses – generational wealth in a European engineering career.
Big Dogs
Cursor (AI coding assistant) hit $100M ARR in 21 months, undercutting GitHub on speed and distribution. “The battle between every startup and incumbent comes down to whether the startup gets distribution before the incumbents gets innovation.” (a16z, 2015).
OpenAI ChatGPT downloads last month exceeded all other social apps – notable given the billion+ penetration of incumbents like Meta and TikTok.
Venture Capital Insights
Dragos Novac’s analysis of Europe’s $1B+ VC funds: Index and Atomico driving mega-rounds, Balderton strong at A/B, EQT split between growth and seed bets, Northzone “late to AI”. Largest rounds: DeepL $300M (Index, Atomico), Collibra $250M (Index), Wayve $200M (Balderton).
Coatue EMW 2025 slides worth a read: “AI is the supercycle.” Highlights: OpenAI’s $40B raise bigger than all top fundraises 2018–24 combined, $10B+ model rounds becoming standard, time to $10M revenue collapsed from 10 years to 12 months, private AI market caps growing faster than public. IPO pipeline strong (Figma, Klarna, Solera, Gemini). M&A accelerating (Meta/Scale, Google/Wizz). Revolut added 40M retail customers in 5 years.
Venture Geopolitics
Rouble-pegged stablecoin, launched by a fugitive Moldovan oligarch with backing from a Russian defence bank, has processed $9.3B in four months – providing a sanctions workaround.
BIS said stablecoins support tokenisation but fail core monetary tests of singleness, elasticity and integrity – limiting their role as true money.
Denmark updating copyright law to give citizens explicit rights over their likeness and voice, targeting AI deepfakes.
Strategic Sectors
AI
CEO of a US B2B software firm ($100M+ ARR): early copilots gave ~10% efficiency, but newer tools like Claude and Replit cut product cycles from 6 months to 1 month. Viral adoption (~$200 per developer/month) is spreading fast – raising fears many developers won’t have jobs within 9 months.
Autonomous vehicles
Applied Intuition (autonomous testing software) raised $600M Series F at $15B valuation, co-led by BlackRock and Kleiner Perkins, with sovereign backers from Qatar and Abu Dhabi.
Defence
Mach Industries (aerial systems) raised $100M at $470M valuation from Khosla Ventures and Bedrock, with Sequoia also in.
Quantum
Nominal (real-time test stack for physical systems) raised $75M Series B led by Sequoia, with Lightspeed, Lux, GC and Founders Fund also backing.