The round was led by Voyager Ventures, with leading angel investors including David Kirk (former Chief Scientist at NVIDIA), Lawrence Leuschner (co-founder and former CEO of TIER Mobility), and the family office Custos participating in the round. The round also received continued backing from Atlantic.vc, Lifeline Ventures, LGF and Illusian.

Anatolii Papulov, CEO and co-founder of NewOrbit, said, “For sixty years, VLEO has been treated as too hostile an environment for commercial satellites — but it is in fact the most valuable empty real estate in space. Today, no one in the industry has a reliable, affordable and fast way to fly payloads in very-low Earth orbit. We built our NEO-1 satellite to do exactly that.”

Founded in May 2021, NewOrbit builds satellites for very low Earth orbit (VLEO), a band of near-Earth space at 200–300km historically reserved for spy satellites and the International Space Station. Its mission is to engineer Earth’s lowest orbiting satellite to advance global connectivity and insight. 

The team building NewOrbit includes senior engineers from SpaceX, NASA, Tesla and Airbus. Its advisory board comprises senior figures from the global space industry, such as Jean-Jacques Dordain, Director General of the European Space Agency (2003-2015), and Sir Chris Deverell, former Commander of UK Joint Forces.

According to the company, three forces have rendered VLEO commercially unviable since the dawn of the space age: aerodynamic drag, which pulls spacecraft back to Earth within weeks; atomic oxygen, which corrodes their surfaces; and aerodynamic torques, which destabilise their orientation. 

NewOrbit claims that it has built purpose-engineered satellites, equipped with the company’s in-house propulsion system, to withstand these conditions and operate reliably in VLEO for up to five years.

VLEO’s commercial logic is simple: flying lower improves visibility and connectivity, all at significantly reduced costs. From 200–300 km, NewOrbit states that it will be able to offer the highest-quality satellite imagery available today, at 20x lower cost than conventional satellites, alongside faster data speeds. 

The UK startup believes these advantages could unlock new space economy paradigms, like 5G direct-to-device from space and live HD video, which aren’t possible with current orbital geometry.

Matthew Blain, Partner at Voyager Ventures, said, “VLEO is the next foundational shift in the global space industry. The technology will unlock order of magnitude improvements in earth observation at a fraction of the cost today. We’re proud to partner with NewOrbit on their journey to become the leading provider of commercial VLEO satellites globally.”

With this fresh funding, the company plans to build NewOrbit’s NEO Production Complex, scheduled to open in 2027. The facility will incorporate the company’s first commercial satellite for launch in 2028. This launch will mark the first time commercial customer payloads have been flown at altitudes between 200-300 km 

It will then expand from an initial capacity of ten satellites annually to several per week at full operation, creating the manufacturing foundation necessary to scale up VLEO commercialisation.  At full operation, the company claims that this complex will be Europe’s largest dedicated VLEO production facility and a strategic industrial asset within the continent’s sovereign space ecosystem.

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The round was led by Realyze Ventures (Germany) and Pi Labs (United Kingdom), with participation from Asterion Ventures (France) and existing investors.

Dhruv Gupta, Principal at Pi Labs, said, “Enterprise energy management is moving from static procurement and reporting toward 24×7 real-time optimisation. Large enterprises spending tens of millions annually on energy still rely heavily on spreadsheets, dashboards and manual workflows. Companion has built a deeply technical AI platform that fundamentally changes software from a recommendation engine to a system of execution. This is what makes this category so important.”

Founded in 2022 by Thomas Vyncke and Jonas Verstraeten, Companion.energy helps large industrial and commercial enterprises turn energy from a risk into a competitive advantage. The company states that its software platform gives them complete transparency on their energy economics and runs AI-driven optimisation workflows that improve their contract mix and steer their assets in real time.

According to Thomas Vyncke, co-founder of  Companion.energy, “European energy markets are undergoing a structural shift. As penetration of renewables increases and industrial demand becomes more electrified, electricity markets are becoming significantly more volatile and operationally complex. Energy prices that once moved seasonally now fluctuate in real time. 

“At the same time, enterprises are deploying growing fleets of batteries, solar installations, EV charging infrastructure and electrified industrial systems. Most companies still manage this environment through fragmented tooling, spreadsheets and static procurement processes but they need a system that runs and optimises energy operations continuously.”

Jonas Verstraeten, co-founder of Companion.energy, said, “We started Companion because we believed the energy transition would force every large industrial enterprise to manage energy actively, and that they would not be able to do that with spreadsheets and quarterly check-ins. The work of the next decade is to give those teams software that can keep up. This round lets us bring that software to many more enterprises, and help them turn their energy from a competitiveness risk into a competitive advantage.”

The company states that it connects energy contracts, operational systems and distributed assets into a single optimisation platform that continuously forecasts demand, models market exposure and automates energy decisions in real time. The platform helps enterprises optimise procurement decisions, steer assets dynamically and improve the economics of electrification at scale. 

Companion.energy also notes that, through the platform, clients benefit from autonomous decision-making to maximise energy assets in real time, reducing energy costs by 10–30%.

The company serves more than 30 enterprise customers across Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, including TotalEnergies, KPN, Port of Antwerp-Bruges, Interparking and Proximus Group. Its customers include manufacturers, logistics operators, telecom operators, EV charging operators, energy companies and other large energy consumers. Over the past year, the company reportedly expanded its customer base and revenue ten times, exceeding €1 million in annual recurring revenue. 

It manages more than 2 TWh of annual energy consumption and production across customer portfolios, representing approximately €500 million in annual energy spend and revenue. Its platform already supports more than 200 MW of distributed energy assets, including solar PV, wind, batteries, e-boilers and EV charging infrastructure

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The round was led by Dutch EnergyTech investor SET Ventures, with Berlin-based ClimateTech fund AENU as co-lead.

Raik Belka, Founder and CEO of GALVANY, said, “We are building the infrastructure that will finally make the heat transition work in the existing-building stock. In Germany, heat pumps do not fail because of the technology, but because of the gap between subsidy bureaucracy, installation capacity, and economic viability for the end customer. 

“This is exactly the gap we are closing — with a platform that makes every link in the chain measurably better while sustaining itself. Closing this round from a profitable position is more than just a metric for us: it is proof that the heat transition is financeable without combustion logic.”

Founded in 2022 by Raik Belka, GALVANY is an end-to-end platform for the heat transition. The company states that it combines sales, procurement, installation, and intelligent operation of heat pump systems in a single system. The platform finances profitable growth, multi-family-home scaling, and AI-powered energy management

At its core are the GALVANY Cube, produced together with Panasonic, and the GALVANY Fusion energy management system. The company’s hardware element is called GALVANY Cube, which is complemented by a modular system architecture in which the heat pump, battery storage, and the GALVANY Fusion energy management system work in concert.

According to the company, in contrast to the market standard, GALVANY relies on a networked platform ecosystem: instead of an expensive direct sales operation, the company integrates acquisition, procurement, installation, and management into a single solution.

It claims that based on dynamic electricity tariffs, load shifting, and spot-market arbitrage, heating and electricity costs are measurably reduced. V1 of the GALVANY app is scheduled for release in the summer, enabling digital control of an entire energy system.

“The next phase of the energy transition will not be decided by hardware, but by the software that intelligently links generation, storage, and consumption. GALVANY is one of the few European companies that consistently thinks this logic through from the end device all the way to the power grid. With the platform and the energy management system, the heat pump evolves from a heating device into an active element of a digitally controlled energy system,” said Dr. Till Stenzel, Partner at SET Ventures.

With this funding, the company plans to focus on the multi-family-home existing-building market and expand the offering for housing companies and portfolio holders. It also plans to further develop GALVANY Fusion as an Agentic Energy OS, which involves further development of the AI-powered energy management system that orchestrates load profiles in real time and translates dynamic electricity tariffs into measurable end-customer savings.

GALVANY also aims to expand partner structures with installation contractors and its own sales organisation to accelerate nationwide platform scaling.

To date, the company has installed more than 2,500 heat pump systems, avoiding over 3,850 tonnes of CO₂. In 2025, GALVANY generated revenue of €20.1 million, a sevenfold increase compared to the previous year, and closed the year with a positive EBIT.

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The firm also announced that KfW Capital (a subsidiary of KfW, Germany’s state-owned promotional bank, which operates on behalf of the federal government and the states) has joined the final close as the fund’s largest investor. Investment Fund of Denmark (EIFO) is the Fund’s second-largest investor. Equation Capital, Basecamp (Phoenix Court), JIMCO, and Allocator One have also backed the fund. In total, 71 limited partners from 21 countries have committed to the fund.

“We are glad to join Creator’s newest fund generation, which targets future-focused sectors such as artificial intelligence, BioTech, computer infrastructure, AI-enabled robotics, and advanced materials. By leveraging Creator’s European academic network to access future founders at leading universities, the team addresses a key element of the innovation ecosystem: translating academic progress into high-growth startups,” said Christian Röhle, co-Head of Investment Management at KfW Capital. 

Founded in 2019 by Jamie Macfarlane, Creator Fund partners with scientific founders at the earliest stage, offering support to scale and helping them raise future rounds. It invests across sectors, with a focus on AI, DeepTech, and BioTech. It invests up to €1 million as a first cheque in European startups and typically (but not exclusively) backs teams where a founder is a PhD, student, professor, or recent graduate. The firm is backed by leading VC investors across Europe and the USA. 

The VC firm states that Europe attracts the world’s leading scientists for study, considering them the most vital asset for startup creation on the continent. Unlike other funds, it believes scientists should be in charge. In order to find them early, Creator Fund has built a student team across 30 universities in 10 countries, making them the first investors a PhD student ever speaks to. It also runs a twenty-part Scientific Founder programme that has taken over 250 students step-by-step through founding a company.

With this, Creator Fund claims to become the largest student fund in the world and the first to scale the student-sourcing model across a continent. In Europe, the focus is on DeepTech. The new Fund has made 11 investments across the Netherlands, Hungary, Denmark, Germany, and the UK, including:

Ovo Labs: a BioTech company that emerged from the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen (Germany), reversing the ageing of human eggs and addressing the reason women struggle to have children as they get older.

Latent Worlds: a Delft-based startup building the backend infrastructure for robotics deployments.

Anzen Industries: a London-based startup creating new materials that do not exist in the world through enzyme reactions. 

SPhotonix: a Delaware-based startup storing the world’s data on quartz glass through ultrafast lasers, already used by Elon Musk for his intergalactic library.

Jamie Macfarlane, founder and CEO of Creator Fund, said, “The world’s biggest problems are being solved in European university labs. The scientists working on them are extraordinary but for too long, they’ve been overlooked by venture capital, pushed towards academia rather than building companies. That’s the gap we exist to fill. This fund means we can back more of them, across Europe, than ever before – and make sure the next generation of world-changing companies is built by the people who have invented the science.”

Explaining the modus operandi of Creator Fund’s Scientific Founder programme, the VC firm stated that each year, 40 Venture Fellows are selected from 450 applicants and embedded across 30 universities in 10 countries. They are trained to identify scientific researchers with the potential to build, and to support them through the earliest stages of company formation. Three of the first 11 investments from the new fund were founded by former fellows.

“We are building Europe’s most powerful deep tech talent community. The brightest PhD minds come to Creator Fund to learn how to build companies. They found businesses we back or they join our portfolio as top technical talent. Others go into VC and invest in our companies in follow on rounds. Creator Fund is the single platform enabling university talent to fuel the next frontier of European tech champions,” said Alexandra Ntemourtsidou, COO of Creator Fund. 

Since 2019, the Creator Fund has backed 62 companies. It returned its first fund last year after selling Loci to Epic Games, a company it backed after a founder’s six-second video caught its attention in a Cambridge University lab. In the past six months, two of Creator Fund’s companies have surpassed €86.7 million ($100 million) in total funding.

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The funding is made up of an Innovate UK grant, as well investments from HERmesa Angels, SyndicateRoom, Lavender Ventures, and individual angel investors.

“Products designed for care should never cause harm. That’s not a vision statement. It’s the reason this company exists,” says Zoe Robson, Founder & CEO of Joyvié Health.

And Ruth, his wife and primary caregiver, carried a burden that was invisible to the world outside and impossibly hard to bear.

“My parents didn’t deserve that,” says Zoe. “They were both at their most vulnerable – and the product meant to help them was making it worse. The skin breakdown, the shame, the loss of dignity, the weight on my mum. It wasn’t from lack of care. It’s a design failure.”

The company is on a mission to end the silent humiliation of faecal incontinence (FI) – a condition affecting an estimated 656 million people globally, yet the most common non-invasive solution remains unchanged for decades: nappies and pads.

Where existing non-invasive product traps faeces against the skin, Joyvié contains stool in a disposable pouch immediately after excretion, significantly reducing skin contact, preserving dignity, and reducing the time and burden of care. Early testing shows approximately 90% reduction in stool-to-skin contact and approximately 70% faster changes.

Faecal incontinence is often caused by conditions such as cancer, dementia, MS, Parkinson’s, spinal injury, or ageing, yet remains heavily under-discussed. It disproportionately affects women as both patients and caregivers, with an estimated 70% of unpaid caregivers being women.

The company outlines that the women’s health sector attracts just 2% of healthcare VC funding despite serving half the population – mirroring statistics that show that women-founded startups receive only 1–2% of venture capital funding globally.

“Three things convinced us: a huge market that VC has typically ignored, an innovative product that demonstrably improves user experience and outcomes, and a strong founder in Zoe who’s driven and won’t take no for an answer. Those don’t often come together.” says Tom Shepherd, Senior Associate, SyndicateRoom.

Pilot programmes will commence soon to gather data on performance, health economics and usability across care home, hospital, and domiciliary settings. Published white papers will follow.

“Faecal incontinence is subjective and chronically underreported – we’ve never truly understood the scale of the problem because people are too ashamed to tell us. The clinical gap is real, and it has consequences. What Joyvié is building helps address the unmet clinical need and provides a useful adjunct in managing this,” says Dr. Ashish Sinha BMBS BMedSci(Hons) MD FRCS, Colorectal Surgeon, St Mark’s National Bowel Hospital.

Today’s announcement is expected to fund a direct-to-consumer product launch later this year, clinical pilots across care home, hospital, and domiciliary settings, strategic partnerships, and their first hires.

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The round was led by Division Q, with participation from NewSchool.vc and Percival Participations. This announcement follows shortly after its initial greenhouse deployments, public launch, and its nomination as a Top 3 finalist for the GreenTech Innovation Awards 2026. The winner will be announced next week at GreenTech Amsterdam.

Olivier Begerem, co-founder and CEO of Sensie, mentioned on LinkedIn, “The past six weeks have been crazy. Starting our first greenhouse deployments, introducing Sensie to the world, joining the HortiHeroes ecosystem, and being selected as a Top 3 nominee for the GreenTech Innovation Awards 2026. It has been intense in the best possible way.

“This funding is about more than capital. It is about bringing the right people around the table as we move from our first installations toward a system growers can rely on every single day. It gives us the support to keep building, testing, and improving alongside growers, researchers, and technology partners.” 

Founded in 2025 by Begerem and Christophe Sysmans (CTO), Sensie aims to democratise plant intelligence. It helps professional growers move beyond climate and substrate data by measuring how the plant itself responds in real time.

The company develops a wireless plant health wearable for professional growers. It states that while growers already measure many aspects of the crop, such as climate, irrigation and substrate data, Sensie makes the plant’s own response measurable in real time. Its wireless plant sensors capture direct physiological signals such as growth, water status, stress and recovery, then translate them into clear insights for better irrigation, climate and cultivation decisions. 

Its first product, Sensie Omni, combines direct plant feedback with root-zone and climate context. It captures the critical interaction between Supply (root zone), Demand (micro-climate) and Response (plant stress) in a single wireless device. The goal is to help growers better understand how their crop responds to decisions such as irrigation, ventilation, screening and climate strategy.

“Modern greenhouse horticulture is already highly data-driven. Yet one critical voice has largely been missing from the conversation: the plant itself. Sensie is changing that with affordable, wireless plant sensors that combine climate, irrigation, and substrate data with direct physiological feedback from the crop. The result is a powerful step toward truly plant-driven cultivation, helping growers make better decisions based on what their plants are actually experiencing,” NewSchool.vc mentioned on LinkedIn. 

With this funding, the company plans to further optimise its hardware and software and accelerate the commercial rollout. It aims to scale Sensie, expand real greenhouse deployments and further develop its platform. The startup is actively seeking certified distributors, technology partners, and research collaborators.

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The company has received support from its historical shareholders, notably Creadev, QIA, Temasek, FFC, ABC Impact, and ADM, as well as its banking partners. It has also announced the completion of its industrialisation phase and a reorganisation of its activities around the Nesle site, now focused on the commercial development of its product ranges. 

Clément Ray, CEO and cofounder of Innovafeed, said, “Since day one, we have carried a dual ambition: to demonstrate that we can produce high-performing, competitive, and sustainable ingredients for nutrition without relying on the intensive exploitation of marine resources; and that it is possible to build an innovative industrial project in France. 

“The successful scale-up of our industrial model marks a major milestone for Innovafeed today and opens up a new phase of commercial deployment. Innovafeed is now focusing its efforts on accelerating the development of value chains for its ingredients, capturing the full value of their multiple functional properties improving animal health and growth, which have been validated and proven for ten years now.”

Founded in 2016 by Aude Guo, Bastien Oggeri, and Clément Ray, Innovafeed develops a technology to rear and transform the Hermetia illucens fly (Black soldier fly) for animal and plant nutrition, thus offering alternatives to the fishmeal and vegetable oils used in fish and animal feed.

The company states that its unique technology makes it possible to reproduce the natural cycle of the insect on a large scale under controlled and optimised conditions. It uses 3,000 sensors to optimise at any time the breeding conditions of larvae. It also uses AI to limit human intervention in the breeding process: robots automatically collect and count the 20,000 eggs laid every second. Innovafeed thus intends to put the insect back at the heart of the food chain.

Innovafeed has also created a proprietary industrial process that transforms larvae using a wet method, ensuring high product quality, especially in digestibility.

The company’s last funding round was in 2022, where it raised €250 million in a Series D financing round led by Qatar Investment Authority (QIA). Since then, the company has achieved three major milestones: its Nesle production unit is now fully operational. In three years, it has produced over 15,000 tons of protein and oil; production volumes have increased tenfold, while production costs have been divided by seven. 

It also witnessed strong commercial traction: revenues have doubled each year, driven by structured partnerships with clients. Lastly, it claims to have demonstrated environmental impact because of the circularity of its industrial symbiosis model; its products deliver a 70–90% reduction in carbon emissions compared with conventional products.

The company states that following a phase of R&D and industrial development that achieved key operational maturity milestones, it is entering a new stage of growth. In this context, it is initiating a reorganisation of its activities, specifically the reduction of zootechnical R&D activities and their integration from its historical Gouzeaucourt site into the Nesle facility. A project to reduce 60 positions is planned, two-thirds of which will affect the Gouzeaucourt site.

“Over the past five years, Innovafeed has won its industrial bet and developed a world-unique asset: a fully operational large-scale production facility that enables highly optimised production of ingredients with functional properties that are valued by pet food and aquaculture players,” said Bénédicte Monpert, Food Managing Director at Creadev. 

In its new phase of development, the company will redirect its investments towards commercial deployment and operational excellence. The new financing operation will specifically enable Innovafeed to accelerate the commercial development of the Hilucia ranges, particularly in the functional segments of aquaculture and pet food, to invest in industrial equipment and processes to develop new offerings and applications, and to optimise the industrial asset base to increase the performance and capacity of the production lines.

“We must also adapt our organisation to this new phase by reducing industrial and zootechnical R&D activities, while continuing to invest alongside our customers to demonstrate functionalities and performance of our products. The talents who made up our R&D and industrial teams enabled us to reach unprecedented milestones in the sector. While we must take demanding measures to adjust our organisation to this new phase, we are deeply committed to recognising the dedication of our teams over the past years and to implementing this transformation plan responsibly, in full respect of social dialogue and in close connection with local authorities,” Ray added.

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The company plans to use the additional financing to fund new customer agreements, enabling Resand to invest in new sand reclamation machinery and scale its operations to meet growing demand. The company states that this demand is driven by foundries under increasing pressure to meet sustainability targets, improve cost efficiency, and secure their sand supply.

Mikko Immonen, CEO of Resand, “Expanding our facility with Norion Bank is a clear sign that our business is growing as planned. Early 2026 has been particularly strong, as we signed new Sand as a Service agreements with both AGVS Aluminium Werke GmbH in Germany and Termit, a leading silica sand producer in Slovenia, in February, further strengthening our presence in the DACH market and Central Europe. 

“The additional financing gives us an excellent foundation to continue our internationalisation and expansion into new markets in line with our strategy. Norion Bank has proven to be an outstanding partner with an understanding of both our business and its sustainability impact.”

Resand began its journey in 2013 as Finn Recycling. In 2023, the company rebranded to Resand, aiming to increase the number of sand regeneration units in the foundry market and to expand its business internationally.

The company specialises in environmentally friendly foundry sand regeneration and recycling. Resand warns that the sand suitable for industrial use is running out. The extraction of virgin sand and the associated loss of biodiversity can be reduced by cleaning and reusing sand. 

Through its Sand as a Service (SaaS) model, it claims to transform waste sand into a valuable resource without requiring large investments or maintenance. The company’s Resand® solution enables foundry sand to be recycled at near-100% efficiency. 

The company states that it builds the modular sand reclaimer directly at the foundry and takes care of training, support, and maintenance, allowing foundries to focus on casting production. It also points out that its solution cuts CO₂ emissions from sand use and transport by up to 80%. 

Founded in 1999, Norion Bank Group (formerly Collector Bank) is a Nordic banking group specialising in financing solutions. It offers “tailored” financing solutions to established mid-sized companies, typically in the €3–30 million range, as well as to growth and international businesses. It has offices in Gothenburg, Stockholm, Helsingborg, Oslo and Helsinki. Operations are conducted through Norion Bank AB (publ), which is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm.

“Resand’s growth is progressing with determination, and expanding the facility is a natural next step in our long-term partnership, where we support company as it expands its international footprint. Over time, we have built a strong understanding of Resand’s business model, investment cycle and growth drivers, which allows us to support them in a scalable and predictable way. Resand combines solid commercial fundamentals with measurable environmental impact,” said Karl-Mikael (Miku) Holmbäck of Norion Bank.

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Brand and reputation are no longer shaped only by what people search for. They are increasingly shaped by what AI answers. The LLM is a new stakeholder in your communications strategy. This applies to startups, scaleups, investors, service providers, and anyone operating in the tech ecosystem.

In that sense, AI is becoming a new stakeholder in the reputation ecosystem, one that aggregates information, surfaces certain narratives and frames how organisations are perceived. AI does not replace human judgment, journalism or networks. But it is rapidly becoming an additional layer through which reputation is formed and interpreted.

Today, your brand is no longer defined only by what people search for. Increasingly, it is defined by what AI answers. And that changes the mechanics of reputation.

• Customers ask ChatGPT which software they should use: “What’s the best software for…?”
• Founders ask which investors to speak to: “Who are the top investors in this space?”
• Journalists use AI to research companies, investors and trends: “Which is the most exciting European DefenceTech company at the moment?”
• LPs use LLMs to compare funds.
• Candidates use AI to evaluate potential employers and ask questions such as: “What does this company actually do?” or “Which FinTech startups are leading in Europe?”
• Customers ask ChatGPT which software they should use. Founders ask which investors are active in their sector. Journalists use AI to research markets. LPs compare funds. Candidate’s prompt: “What does this company actually do?”

AI systems are no longer just retrieving information. They are synthesising it. They summarise positioning, compare competitors and benchmark claims, often before anyone visits your website.

In effect, the LLM has become a key layer in your communications strategy. It interprets your brand on behalf of others based on patterns, authority, structure and data.

Brand legibility becomes critical

This shift introduces a new requirement: brand legibility. AI systems can only process what is structured and consistent. Vague positioning, inflated claims or fragmented messaging are no longer just branding weaknesses. They become computational disadvantages.

If your positioning is unclear, the model will approximate it. If your claims are exaggerated, they will be benchmarked. If your messaging is inconsistent, it will surface.

Performative branding becomes fragile in an environment where everything can be cross-checked instantly. Companies, therefore, need to think about becoming algorithm-optimised.

An algorithm-optimised brand is built on:

• Clear, differentiated positioning
• Authoritative third-party sources, especially earned media
• Consistent messaging across platforms
• Structured data and information
• Fresh, high-quality content

Trust and credibility are built over time through consistent communication and behaviour.

Earned media as structured credibility

Earned media takes on a new role in this environment. AI systems tend to prioritise coverage from trusted third parties over self-published claims. Articles and mentions in authoritative sources, consistent citations and clearly defined positioning influence how companies are described in AI-generated summaries.

Thought leadership no longer shapes perception. It helps define categories. It teaches systems how to describe your company and your market and drives validation. The brands most frequently referenced by credible outlets are more likely to appear in AI-generated answers about “leading companies” or “top investors”.

Why personal brands matter even more

As AI provides summaries and comparisons of companies, people become anchors. When information becomes abundant and comparable, interpretation becomes a major differentiator. The edge shifts to judgment, to how clearly someone thinks and how consistently they articulate their reasoning and beliefs.

This is why personal brands gain strategic importance in the age of AI. When founders, investors and operators consistently publish thoughtful, structured insights, they create a visible record of their reasoning. Over time, that builds authority. And authority is precisely what AI systems prioritise.

Personal thought leadership becomes part of the evidence layer that shapes how companies are described, adding depth and differentiation beyond abstract summaries and comparable information.

New standards for marketing and PR

AI accelerates execution in marketing, communications and PR. Drafting, research and content repurposing now take minutes instead of hours, making work easier in many ways. At the same time, it introduces new challenges, mainly raising the bar for clarity, consistency and credibility.

Today, successful PR must combine storytelling with data literacy and strategic discipline, consistent narrative, and strong personal brands and thought leadership. It must ensure that positioning is structured enough to be interpreted accurately and relevant enough to stand out.

In the age of AI, your brand is no longer just what you publish. It is what the algorithm understands, and what people still believe. The companies that deliberately manage both dimensions will not only appear in AI-generated summaries. They will lead them.

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