Nick Clegg joins HIRO Capital to invest in spatial AI innovation across Europe

Nick Clegg Joins HIRO Capital to Drive Spatial AI Investments

Nick Clegg, former president of global affairs at Meta and Britain's deputy prime minister, has joined venture capital firm HIRO Capital as a general partner to focus on spatial AI innovation in Europe 1

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. The move signals a significant bet on Europe's capacity to compete in next-generation computing technologies, despite widespread skepticism about the continent's tech prospects compared to the United States and China.

Clegg, who departed Meta in January, will work alongside HIRO's general partners Luke Alvarez, Cherry Freeman, and British computer games legend Ian Livingstone in the newly launched HIRO III fund 2

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. The fund is targeting more than 500 million euros ($582 million) to deploy across spatial computing ventures, with individual investments ranging between 5 million euros and 50 million euros 1

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Yann LeCun Joins Advisory Board as Meta Veterans Pivot to Spatial AI

In a notable addition, Yann LeCun, who recently stepped down as Meta's chief AI scientist, will join HIRO's advisory board 2

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. The convergence of two prominent Meta figures around spatial AI underscores a shared conviction that immersive computing platforms represent the next frontier of technological development. These platforms underpin critical applications in robotics, augmented reality, and self-driving cars—sectors where Europe maintains deep laboratory and academic research capabilities .

Clegg emphasized that pessimism about Europe's prospects was overdone, noting that the continent remains home to 500 million-plus people with some of the world's best researchers and an increasingly vibrant tech startup scene 2

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. "There's a great deal of expertise, deep laboratory and academic research in Europe, which can and will become increasingly relevant," Clegg said in an interview 1

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Targeting Scale-Up Capital Gap in Robotics and Defense

The HIRO team has already identified investment opportunities across multiple sectors, including robotics, sports and gaming, and defense, as well as spatial computing technologies such as orientation, navigation, and autonomy 2

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. The fund specifically aims to address a critical gap for scale-up capital in investments in Europe, where promising startups often struggle to secure the funding needed to compete globally 1

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This focus on spatial AI matters because it represents a shift from traditional software-based artificial intelligence toward systems that understand and interact with physical space. For European tech companies, this could provide a pathway to differentiation in markets where American and Chinese competitors have dominated. The involvement of experienced operators like Clegg and advisors like LeCun brings both capital and strategic guidance to startups navigating complex technical and regulatory landscapes. As spatial computing technologies mature, watch for HIRO's portfolio companies to emerge in sectors where Europe has traditionally maintained strength, particularly in automotive autonomy, industrial robotics, and innovation in gaming and entertainment applications.