The European response to TBPN is here and ready to go live five days a week, starting June 27.
Luke Knight and Ronan Chambers first launched the London-based company European Technology Network (ETN) last October, breaking down tech trends and news during a live broadcast two days a week. Currently, the show is live-streamed on X and YouTube and has garnered over 5 million views.
On Monday, the network announced a $1.6 million fundraising round from major players in the media ecosystem, including Powerhouse Capital, Axel Springer SE (which owns Business Insider and Politico), one of the co-founders of popular media publication LadBible, and angel investors from OpenAI and DeepMind. With this new capital, the network announces its largest expansion to date.
He’s now moving into a big studio in Kings Cross (where all the hot London AI startups are), growing the team (currently just eight), launching a newsletter and, from today, moving to a five-day-a-week live show schedule, which will soon see Knight and Chambers interviewing the likes of George Robson (partner at Sequoia) and Rishi Sunak (former UK Prime Minister and senior advisor to Anthropic and Microsoft).
Speaking to TechCrunch, Knight and Chambers said ETN has already become a must-see stop on the European startup press tour – they spoke to the founder of Synthesia, the CFO of Legora, the founder of Granola and Kanishka Narayan, the UK’s first AI minister. American investors have even come to the show when they are in town, including one from Andreessen Horowitz.
“ETN was born out of a gaping hole in the industry,” Chambers told TechCrunch. “It’s all about rhythm.” He said the current media ecosystem in the UK cannot keep up with how quickly the tech scene is changing. For example, so far this year, London startups have raised $14.7 billion according to Dealroom. Six companies have raised more than $500 million: Wayve, Superintelligence, ElevenLabs, Recursive, Ineffable Intelligence and Isomorphic Labs, the latter three having been founded by DeepMind alumni.
“These are things that have never happened in Europe before,” Chambers continued, referring to the speed at which capital flows through the ecosystem. As the show became more popular, Chambers said they received about 70 pitches a week from guests wanting to be on the show. They were trying to cram 12 interviews into two hours, twice a week, but ultimately it was too much. “We needed a media outlet that could keep pace with that,” he said of the interest in the show and the speed at which Europe’s tech ecosystem is evolving, “which is why we’re moving from two days a week to five days a week.”
The five-day format will look a lot like the two-day format. There will be a live show from 12pm UK time to 3pm breaking down trending news stories, then for two hours guests on the show will talk about what they want. Chambers said they also want to start hosting debates, panel discussions and a Shark Tank-style pitch session on the show.
“We want to make it as useful to the ecosystem as possible,” Chambers said. “There needs to be more talk about AI in Europe. There needs to be more talk about venture capital and cash flow in the ecosystem. There needs to be more talk about the amazing things happening in the tech ecosystem, and our role is to be the space where people can shout about all the amazing things they’re doing.”
The show makes money through advertising, like most media publications, and big-name sponsors already include prediction marketplace Polymarket, blockchain company Base and audio darling AI ElevenLabs.
When asked about the influence TBPN had on them, Knight and Chambers said they were indeed interested in John Coogan and Jordi Hays, founders of TBPN (who recently sold to OpenAI for what some say is a nine-figure sum), as pioneers of this new tech media ecosystem. The show has become a place where tech guests can appear and chat with friendly faces, announcing new products, hiring or funding news. “I thought if we could have an ITV and a BBC, why wouldn’t we have a regional version?” » Chambers continued.
Europe is, however, a vast territory, with more than 40 different countries and more than 200 languages spoken (24 of which are recognized by the European Union). Chambers said that although ETN will report from London, he and Knight are working to invite guests from across the continent. In addition to bringing guests into the studio, they also travel to Europe’s hottest tech conferences. For example, they broadcast from the Panathenaea Conference in Athens and from inside the Louvre in Paris for the RAISE AI summit.
“You have all these different cultures, these different minds coming together and creating different products,” Chambers said. “You get a taste of what makes [Europe] a superpower.
With all this, they said they would never turn down an American founder if they wanted to be on the show. “This is a European technology network, but we believe there is a huge [global] opportunities,” Chambers said. Knight added to that, noting how often conversations pit Europe’s tech ecosystem against that of the United States.
“We’re optimistic overall,” Knight said. “We’re driving global prosperity from Europe. Wherever you want to go and build your business, wherever the best place is to build that business, go out there and do it, and we’ll shout at you to go.”
He and Chambers don’t necessarily consider themselves journalists either; rather, they consider themselves tech insiders, curious about what’s happening and why. They also do not see themselves as replacing traditional media and instead intend to work in tandem with these publications. “We rely on traditional media,” Chambers said, adding that’s how they find most of the information they can talk about on ETN.
Overall, the duo hope to help document the stories emerging from Europe’s new wave of success, from London’s ElevenLabs to Stockholm’s Lovable, to help the next generation understand that technology is a way to move a nation forward.
Discussing the impact of European success stories, Chambers said: “It’s pissing off the next generation to the point where it’s no longer cool to finish college and go into banking or consulting. People want to leave college and go straight into building a startup, and I think that’s an incredible thing.”
This article has been updated to clarify who invested in the company.
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