{"id":338179,"date":"2025-12-11T03:32:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T03:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/338179\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T03:32:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T03:32:12","slug":"nick-clegg-takes-on-venture-capital-role-alongside-meta-ai-scientist-yann-lecun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/338179\/","title":{"rendered":"Nick Clegg takes on venture capital role alongside Meta AI scientist Yann LeCun"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/p>\n

Sir Nick Clegg is becoming a venture capitalist, with the former Meta executive and UK deputy prime minister taking on a new role as an investor in European technology groups.<\/p>\n

Clegg<\/a>, who left Facebook\u2019s parent company as its head of global affairs earlier this year, told the Financial Times\u2019 Global Boardroom event that he has joined London-based Hiro Capital as a general partner.<\/p>\n

According to people familiar with the matter, the firm is looking to raise a new fund \u2014 dubbed Hiro III \u2014 worth more than \u20ac500mn. Yann LeCun, who recently announced that he would soon leave his post as Meta\u2019s chief AI scientist, is also joining the firm as an adviser.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The new fund will invest between \u20ac5mn and \u20ac50mn into companies in the UK and Europe working on spatial artificial intelligence, robotics, longevity, gaming, space and defence. The firm aims to announce its first investment from the newly raised fund in the first half of 2026.<\/p>\n

Clegg\u2019s connections to the technology sector<\/a> as well as governments will help Hiro Capital build successful companies in Europe, said Luke Alvarez, the firm\u2019s founder and managing general partner.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMuch of the theme in Europe over the last couple of years clearly has been about more technological geostrategic autonomy,\u201d said Alvarez. <\/p>\n

\u201cHaving an understanding of how government and regulators work is relevant to helping our portfolio flourish and building global leading companies from Europe,\u201d he added.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Clegg told the FT conference that Europe had a \u201cvery, very profound dilemma, which is that we\u2019re not only completely dependent on US tech\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. [but] when we have good people with good ideas, we export them to the US\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said the idea of the Hiro fund was to focus on \u201cthose sectors where Europe has deep, deep sort of academic and research laboratory expertise\u201d.<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n

\"Nick<\/a><\/p>\n

LeCun, who is leaving Meta<\/a> at the end of the year to start his own company, will help the fund assess investments in AI companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are entering a new phase of AI \u2014 an era of systems which can understand the physical world, have persistent memory and which can reason and plan complex actions,\u201d said LeCun. <\/p>\n

\u201cHiro\u2019s track record of investing in spatial technologies, 3D tech, wearables and gaming means they are exceptionally well placed to capitalise on this new wave of opportunity in Europe,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-338179","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}