€10tn sits in German private capital. Almost none of it flows to long-term startup growth. Investors still call venture too risky, too hard to regulate, and weaker than buyout. Earlybird & 23 other VCs published the data that busts all three myths. Recap from the GVGF Forum 👇

Go team @obligatecom!

oTFY is now live on @Morpho Investors can use trade finance yield as collateral for liquidity, while keeping exposure to real commodity shipments. Built with @TradeflowM (financing), @redstone_defi (pricing) & @RockawayX (risk).

A couple of weeks ago we hosted @FactoryAI for a roundtable on the future of software engineering. One of the most impressive features Factory has is it's Missions offering - up to 22 days (!) of long-horizon coding agents working on large codebase refactoring as one example. I asked Dmytro about Missions and their harness.

AI for VC Fund Operations, put to work. Three days in Berlin with real fund-ops challenges. Teams working across reporting, deal flow, portfolio monitoring and institutional knowledge with workshops, build sprints and plenty of comparing notes along the way. Thank you to everyone who participated and to our partners!

Europe needs to try more AI in its factories. In our latest Founder Spotlight, Siddharth Khullar, founder & CEO of @ArisMachina, joined us to talk about industrial AI, getting customers on board, and hiring people for hard problems. A look inside the conversation with @sidk_

The demo is where the easy story ends. September at Gradient Descending moved from Barcelona to Munich to London, with discussions on what production AI actually needs once the demo is over. Check out our full recap here: go.earlybird.com/PvNjwY4h3U

finmid (@wearefinmid) raised a €17m Series A extension and launched two major products with Bolt and Skroutz. The bigger story: platforms are becoming the place where business financing actually happens. From fleet vehicles to merchant loans, the team is building the infrastructure behind it. All in since Day One!

Congrats to portco @m0 on the platform news below! cc: @TimRehder & @AkashBajwa96

Orbit Achieved. Payload Deployed. Mission 'Onward and Upward' delivered our first customer satellites to orbit, achieving major milestones: ✅ MaxQ ✅ Stage separation ✅ Stage 2 engine ignition ✅ Fairing separation ✅ ORBIT ✅ Second engine cutoff and transfer orbit injection ✅ Circularization burn completed ✅ Payload released ✅ Contact with first satellites acquired, remaining in progress