Miraise at Slush 2025: Europe's AI Frontier Seen From Helsinki
TLDR
- Miraise’s CEO Iwata and EIR Matsui attended Slush 2025 in Helsinki, where 13,000 participants confirmed AI now dominates European startup activity across every sector.
Key Takeaways
- Slush 2025 ran November 19-20 at Helsinki Expo and Convention Center with 13,000 attendees including 6,000+ founders and investors.
- Every presenting company framed itself as “AI plus X”; dominant verticals were deep tech, HR, decarbonization, and health; consumer and entertainment were absent.
- Pitch contest winner Diffraqtion uses quantum sensing and AI to deliver 20x the resolution and 1,000x the processing speed of conventional cameras, and raised €1M from General Catalyst and Cherry Ventures after winning.
- Europe’s key competitive levers identified at the event: the proposed “28th Regime” regulatory framework, pension fund capital deployment, and an influx of non-Big-Tech engineers driven partly by US immigration restrictions.
- GDPR is seen as increasingly misaligned with the AI era; a regulatory pivot on privacy rules is expected.
Why It Matters
- Founders at the event largely rejected the AI bubble narrative; investors were more cautious, creating a visible tension between capital and operators on valuation risk.
- Europe’s talent advantage over the US is growing as immigration restrictions push skilled engineers toward Helsinki, Berlin, and other hubs, diversifying the AI engineering base.
- Japanese cities including Tokyo, Kyoto, and Fukuoka ran official side events at Slush, signaling active governmental interest in the European startup corridor.
Matsui (EIR, Miraise), miraise.vc · 2026-02-08 · Read the original