Andrey Khusid

Europe doesn’t have a talent problem. It has a growth capital problem. I recently discussed this at the Sifted Summit together with Anne Germain (BPI France), Christine Hockley (British Business Bank), and Morgan Kessous (Revaia). We covered everything from what it will take to close Europe’s growth funding gap, how we can best support home-grown innovation, and why Europeans aren’t benefitting enough from local tech successes. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: since 2015, Europe has been short roughly $300B in growth funding compared to the US. The result? Many of our best startups either sell early or go abroad to seek funding. And yet, we have all the ingredients for global leadership: 4 of the world’s top 10 universities More scientific publications than the US A deep bench of technical founders What we don’t have is enough European money backing European innovation. If just 1% of European pension capital were allocated to venture and growth funds, we could transform the landscape - funding not just the top 1% of startups, but the top 10%. Deeptech makes this especially urgent. These companies take longer to commercialise, but they’re building the technologies that will define the next decades and transform everything from energy systems to healthcare and industrial productivity. Public-private coordination is starting to move in the right direction (Germany’s WIN initiative is one example). But we need more: more boldness, more alignment, and more long-term thinking. If Europe wants to compete globally, we have to stop exporting our upside and start compounding it at home. Thanks to Amy Lewin and Sifted for hosting a brilliant conversation.

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It was fantastic to bring the most innovative thinkers of the Dutch AI ecosystem together during AI Connect with our partners at Techleap and to see so many leaders, innovators, and pioneers gathered in one room.  The day was filled with examples of AI in practice. From Science to Startups, to the future of communication or how John Abel and John Stone addressed digital sovereignty, reminding us it’s “not about isolation, but about maintaining control and ownership of data.” Thanks to Max Welling, @ Deborah Nass, Wesley Haar, ter, Daniel Gebler, and Natasha ten Cate for sharing their unique perspectives. The future is unpredictable, and that’s what makes it so exciting! Let’s connect that famous Dutch ingenuity with the world's best AI tools. Let's build, let's learn, and let's lead. Let's make the Netherlands an AI frontrunner together! Couldn’t make it? Relive the momentum, the connections, and the shared vision with us by watching the aftermovie. #AIConnect #AI #DutchAI #Google #Techleap

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Struggling to track ownership in your startup and worried about losing control? In 2025, a precise cap table establishes the foundation of authority and trust within your company. Unclear equity records create vulnerabilities that impact strategic decisions and stakeholder confidence. Founders, without a strong cap table, managing growth and investment becomes challenging. Read the guide to understand why every founder must maintain accurate ownership records to scale effectively. #AccioLegal #AccioEsops #ClientSuccess #LegalSupport #StartupLaw #WinAcademy #Contracts #Compliance #Gratitude

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Every founder we invest in signs an Impact Pact. Written into our investment documents. Legally binding. Not as marketing. As requirement. Most impact funds talk about doing good. We structure it into every deal. The concept is simple: paying it forward. We share access to capital with founders the traditional VC ecosystem overlooks. In return, we expect our founders to pay it forward in three areas: Wealth sharing: How are you distributing ownership beyond the executive team? In 2024, our portfolio generated over $400 million in wealth creation—$342 million for BIPOC and women founders, plus $65 million in employee equity. Supplier diversity: How much spending goes to companies founded by people of color or women? Our portfolio directed $9 million to diverse suppliers last year—30% BIPOC-owned, 35% women-owned. Diversity goals: Not quotas. Intentionality. 92% of our founders are BIPOC. 81% of their employees are BIPOC. 77% of the $39.7 million in compensation went to BIPOC team members. Here's what makes this different: It's legally binding. Not in a deck. In the documents we both sign. It's specific. No vague language. Measurable commitments. It compounds. Year over year, these numbers grow because the structure demands it. The question I always get: "Does this work? Or is it virtue signaling?" Fair question. Here's the data: Our portfolio created 436 jobs in 2024 — a 48% compound annual growth rate since 2021. These aren't just any jobs. They're pathways to wealth in communities excluded from venture-backed opportunity. The paying-it-forward model creates a multiplier effect. When our founders prioritize diverse suppliers, those suppliers gain revenue and credibility that help them win more business. When our founders build inclusive teams, they tap talent pools competitors ignore. When our founders share equity broadly, retention improves and alignment deepens. Each company becomes a node in a network of shared access—not just a single investment, but a catalyst for ecosystem-wide change. Why structure impact this way? Because impact that isn't measured doesn't compound. When you invest in a founder, you're not just buying equity in one company. You're investing in their commitment to pay it forward — through the vendors they choose, the teams they build, the wealth they share. The Impact Pact ensures impact is intentional, measurable, and compounding. Returns are not concessionary. Our current Fund I: 34.8% gross IRR. 1.75x return multiple. More than two times above the median for comparable VC funds. The Impact Pact isn't altruism. It's a structured method for paying forward the access we provide and capturing the returns that come when overlooked founders get their shot. Fund II is open with the Impact Pact built into every deal. Same structure. Same accountability. Same thesis: that paying it forward isn't charity. It's alpha. If you're an LP who believes in compounding returns and compounding impact, let's talk.

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📢Introducing Our Next Chapter: Meet Volta Ventures Seed 📢 We're very happy to announce our new very early stage venture capital fund, laser-focused on investing in the earliest stages of B2B software in the Benelux. Why now? Because the game has changed. Today's start-ups, powered by AI, can develop solutions ✔️faster, ✔️smarter, and tackle problems once thought ✔️unsolvable. Meanwhile, established companies have been constrained, under-investing in innovation due to challenging economic and fundraising conditions. We see this as a unique opportunity for visionary entrepreneurs to disrupt the status quo and surpass industry leaders by leveraging the transformative power of AI. Over the next three years, Volta Ventures new 20M Seed fund will invest between €100K and €1M per round, supporting exceptional founders from day one. You can expect even quicker decision-making, allowing for smaller tickets and opportunities for club deals with strong angel investors and co-investors. We are excited to have already completed our first investments: 👉 LangWatch (Amsterdam) – tooling for secure and reliable AI language models, together with Passion Capital and Antler. 👉 Predikt (Leuven) – AI platform for forecasting and predictive analytics. Together with Frank Maene, Koen De Waele, Stan Jeanty, Mieke Verstraete, Michel Akkermans, and our investors/partners, we remain closely committed to supporting founders. Are you building something groundbreaking? Let's connect! #VentureCapital #AI #EarlyStage #Innovation #StartupFunding

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differentiation matters. just read recently elvekrok & tobiassen’s “brand development in early-stage tech startups: an effectual approach” - and it resonated; most founders think of differentiation as something you craft later, when you’re scaling. a market exercise. a design sprint. a pitch deck line. but these cats found that early brand identity isn’t a gtm layer 🐈 it’s a mirror of the founder’s personal values and decision-making. It’s not a logo or a tagline // it’s the *accumulated evidence of every choice*; how the founders describe the problem in their own words, how they frame the first product narrative, how they invite employees (or other stakeholders) into the story, how they think they can outperform the competition. this doesn’t happen on a whiteboard. i’ve seen this phenomenon repeat; differentiation isn’t just a story | It’s a pattern of (early) choices. ↘ https://lnkd.in/djd2Tb9q

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At Toloka we have always been aiming to build a system where human insight could scale as infrastructure. This year, we took that mission to a new level by covering the entire AI lifecycle— from training models to solving long-horizon tasks in the real world. In 2025, we finalised a product foundation to cover all the spectrum of demand for human data: - Managed Services: This year we expanded our data offerings to support the next generation of AI agents through RL Gyms. Today, we are proud to partner with the world’s leading labs and enterprises to train and evaluate their AI agents and support large-scale data projects. - Self-Service Platform: In December we opened a beta version of our self-service platform to put state-of-the-art practices of human data collection into the hands of every researcher. With access to the whole pyramid of domain experts controlled by our LLM QA technology, research teams get the opportunity to experiment and iterate on human data as fast as they iterate on code. - Tendem: technologically, our most ambitious experiment yet. Tendem is a hybrid AI agent that solves the "reliability gap" by orchestrating AI speed with vetted human input and allows to solve unique long tail tasks which AI-only instruments fail to solve. We will continue our development in these directions to ensure constantly growing spectrum of opportunities to monetise their expertise for the diverse crowd of experts at Mindrift. A massive thank you to our partners at Anthropic, Amazon, Microsoft, Shopify, Nebius and all the other amazing AI teams for trusting us with your most complex challenges, and to the Toloka team for a year filled with milestones. Happy new year! Lots to come in 2026...

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