Field Notes from SuperReturn Venture: AI in the Spotlight, Responsible Investing in the Wings
Last week, SuperReturn Venture - Europe’s leading fundraising conference for LPs and VCs - brought together the ecosystem for three days of discussion on the trends and issues shaping the region. While we operate in a complex and diverse market, one theme came to dominate the agenda: AI.
Conversations spanned how to drive returns in the age of AI, how to protect portfolios from AI-driven competition, and how to safeguard Europe’s economy amid a global race for AI dominance. The language of previous years - sustainability, ESG, responsible investing - took a back seat. Resilience, sovereignty, and returns became the watchwords of the week.
But the retreat of sustainability rhetoric does not signal the retreat of responsible investing. If anything, the urgency and opportunity have grown.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the conversation around AI governance. Research published earlier this year by Reframe Venture - drawing on 18 months of engagement involving over 200 VC and growth equity funds and 80 LPs managing more than $6 trillion in AUM, and a survey of 56 practitioners - found that 73 per cent of VCs believe companies with stronger responsible AI practices will be more financially successful. Yet only 14 per cent rate their firm’s current AI risk assessment capabilities as good, and fewer than half include responsible AI in their due diligence at all.
On the fringes of this year’s conference, Reframe Venture convened discussions that underscored this gap: investors are increasingly aware of the risks - and the returns - that better AI governance could unlock, but most lack a clear framework for how to act on that awareness. Belief is outpacing practice by a considerable margin.
The ESG story is more encouraging, and a panel I hosted with Theresa Bardubitzki of KfW, Marie Bos of HV Capital, and Chris Elphick of UK Private Capital offered a useful lens on how the ecosystem is evolving. Thanks to a concerted push from key stakeholders, we are approaching a genuine moment of standardisation in ESG reporting. Reframe Venture and UK Private Capital have played an active role alongside the British Business Bank in developing a UK standard, which we hope to share more on in the Autumn. Within continental Europe, the Invest Europe reporting guidelines have established a credible path forward.
This matters not as an end in itself, but because standardisation finally frees the ecosystem to move beyond compliance. ESG reporting has long been a time-consuming, backwards-looking exercise. The more valuable work - helping companies identify the sustainability-related initiatives that will make them more resilient, more trusted, and better positioned for long-term growth - has too often been crowded out. We are now closer to having the infrastructure to do that work properly.
Reframe Venture has recently taken a practical step in this direction with the launch of its inaugural portfolio programme, which I help to lead. Supported by Atomico and Northzone, our first cohort earlier this year brought together four growth-stage companies to build a deeper understanding of sustainability and impact - including how issues such as responsible AI use and sustainable product design could shape their future trajectories. If you would like to learn more, please get in touch.
On the surface, this year’s edition of SuperReturn Venture saw sustainability take a back seat. Dig a little deeper, and a different picture emerges. The responsible use of AI, the standardisation of ESG reporting, and the embedding of sustainability into portfolio value creation are not peripheral concerns - they are increasingly central to what it means to build and back durable businesses. There has never been a greater opportunity - or a more pressing obligation - to get this right.
Authored by Henry Philipson,
Director of Marketing and Communications, Beringea
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors. For more insights from Beringea, visit their website.
