All Posts

Alexander Galitsky and his latest thoughts on AI, energy, quantum computing, Europe’s challenges in tech December 06, 2025

Europe Keeps Failing at the Technological Revolution and how to fix that?

At the Dragon Makers event in Ljubljana, alongside other major investors (collectively worth $107 billion), Alexander Sasha Galitsky, a former scientist and technological pioneer who operates between the USA and Europe, was also present and gave an interview.

They say you like to invest in eccentric founders. How would you describe the moment when you feel someone is onto something special?

When I talk about this, I sometimes even say “a little crazy.” People who just follow the rules usually don’t see the real problems. If you always cross the street at the green light, you only see the code you can’t change.

People who think outside the box can bring something new. For me, it’s important to find such people, while those coming from business schools tend to follow corporate rules. They spend a long time learning how business is done in large companies. I prefer entrepreneurs driven by dreams, those who come with seemingly crazy ideas. If the market gives good feedback and I see they are learning, listening, have a vision, and understand what they want to deliver, then that’s my person.

For some, I might be an energy vampire, drawing energy from them, says Alexander Galitsky.

Of course, I don’t push people from good schools away, but I am very cautious with them. They are very well-prepared to deliver messages and also to embellish a bit. They can quickly click through slides and clone this or that business model, but they are not my people.

For you, disruption is an opportunity for business and development. Is disruption also our new normal?

Today, everyone talks about artificial intelligence, and I completely agree that it is a key driver in this process. But if you want to disrupt something, you need to understand the business process well and then introduce technology that changes it. AI is starting to play that role. The driving force is the process. But that doesn’t mean you really understand the process if you go to business school and study, for example, how the media business works. You can learn all the clichés of media history, listen to stories from the eighties, nineties, watch TikTokers, and think you understand what drives the industry. But you might still not understand the internal processes. The magic happens where deep process knowledge and deep technological knowledge meet – that’s where disruption comes from.

Usually, two types of people come to you, and I always tell my investment team: we never invest in just one person. You can have an excellent “disruptor” who understands technology but not the process, or someone who understands the process but can’t develop the technology. It’s very hard to find someone who knows everything, so you need a team.

That’s why I always want to see team players. One can be a technologist, the other a “disruptor” if we’re talking about process disruption.

Investing in “a little crazy” company founders sounds very bold. Aren’t you taking on too much risk with that?

It depends on what you mean by crazy. For me, it’s about people who think differently. Sometimes it seems crazy, sometimes unusual, but they can bring something very interesting. These are people who don’t take the same path as everyone else but go their own way and might discover a shortcut.

What is the main thing that excites you in presentations? Is it speaking skills or the product or the innovation?

I learned long ago never to judge just by the performance. In the nineties, when I started working with Americans, I received an interesting letter from a member of a historically significant Russian noble family living in the USA. He wrote to me: “You started hiring Americans. Be careful. They are excellent salespeople – but mostly they sell themselves.”

From that moment, when I listen to a presentation, it’s important to me whether the person delivering the message really understands what they are talking about, but more importantly, I need to see value in it. Can I measure that value? Can I see how this solution or product will put the company on an exceptional growth path? Of course, I check the technology, technological value, processes, strategy – all of that. But the main thing is that we invest in people, in the team.

When you invest, you become part of the family for at least five, ten, sometimes fifteen years. It’s a long cycle. I always ask myself the same questions: would I be happy if I were employed in this company, if I worked with these people, doing what they do. If the answer is yes, then it becomes “my” company. That’s how I choose personal investments.

Your approach seems good to me.

It doesn’t matter if a person is shy or not. Even a shy founder can very clearly present their dreams, and if they can be measured in value and a timeframe for execution, they get the deal. Such a person usually needs a mentor who also personally likes this founder.

We have invested in some gaming companies, and our friend Trip Hawkins, the legendary American entrepreneur, founder of one of the largest video game publishers in the world, Electronic Arts, and the mobile gaming company Digital Chocolate, whom I called, became such a mentor to the CEO of one of these companies. A good mentor is one way to success.

Diane Greene, co-founder of the tech giant VMware and former head of Google's cloud business, an extremely strong and respected leader, I asked to become a mentor to the chief operating officer, who is shy and still needs to learn. There are quite a few such stories, maybe you even know one. You know that Eric Schmidt, the longtime CEO of Google, had his mentor at the beginning of leading Google, even though he had already held top positions at Sun Microsystems?

Sometimes you need a mentor to know how to lead people, recognize what skills they lack, and help them learn to publicly deliver messages. A shy person can learn this, but you can’t fix a stupid person, no matter how hard you try.

Which technology will change humanity, moving it to a brighter side of life?

I strongly believe in artificial intelligence. Not only do I believe, I know it is advancing much faster than we predicted. But we live in strange times. Every technology can be used in very different ways.

In the past, many technologies entered commercial use from the defense and military sector. Since the nineties, some have developed faster in commercial hands. So we have a kind of tension: on one side, commercial players, even in the AI field, driven by private interests and business, and on the other side, we forget about people – how they will accept this technology, whether it is good or bad for them. Look at how TikTok is changing the brains of young people who have stopped reading long texts. Businesspeople can say, I manage money and make it, but this is dangerous. Development cannot be stopped because it is already in the hands of the private sector. Now we see governments trying to take control, we see tensions between the USA and Europe over technology and technological trust. The frictions are already here: what in this “friendly” relationship belongs to the USA, what to Europe.

The big question is what comes next. AI is a good thing, but it requires a lot of energy, and the question is also what we will do with people who will lose their jobs because of it.

Because I travel a lot, I see that two billion people in the world have no access to electricity, and another billion have poor, unstable access. How to reduce the digital divide? Among them are many very smart people. I remember a trip to Kathmandu in 2003. After I created and sold a company, I went to see the mountains, Everest, and everything else. I met a young, smart guy who came from nothing and managed about 50 satellite internet connections across Nepal with a regular phone from home.

I believe that smart people are everywhere. They need access to technologies and knowledge, then they can change the world. That’s why, for me, the next big wave of opportunity is in the energy sector. Personally, I have invested a lot in fusion technology. I see that a lot of effort needs to be directed there.

Technologically speaking, the next wave is also quantum computing, but all this requires energy, and we must not forget about the people who will be “out of the game” for a while.

I am a bit worried about Europe. It seems like it keeps losing the technological revolution. During the personal computer revolution, there were maybe eight European companies making personal computers – and then no more. It was similar with cloud solutions and semiconductors. In Europe, many things start but also fizzle out.

Why is it still so difficult to create global success stories despite all the knowledge and innovation culture?

Europe is Europe, but the European Union is still made up of 27 countries. They have been “united” for many years, but we are still talking about questions like how to make Slovenia the Silicon Valley of Europe. That won’t happen. The real question is how to make Silicon Valley in Europe.

Europe is not unified in many ways. What is good in Europe and the reason it exists at all are strong universities, strong state support, and a lot of money for research.

When I talk about the bridge between the USA and Europe, I sometimes think I did a good job for a bad thing. When I moved from the USA and founded a company in Europe, I encountered the main European problem: disunity.

I remember in 2000, when I was walking through European banks trying to sell them security solutions. In the USA, discussing with banks is easier; everyone fights for innovations and competes for them.

You know the old American management joke: “No one ever got fired for buying IBM.” So, if you, as a manager in Europe, buy expensive but established and safe technology, no one will blame you, even if the solution is not ideal. You didn’t want to take a risk. If you, as a manager, take a risk and buy a solution from a small startup, you bear personal risk: if it succeeds, great, if not, you can appear irresponsible and might get fired.

Just as a company founder must be a magnet for investors, a country must be a magnet for people to want to come there and create.

It’s about the European mentality of avoiding risk: they prefer to choose a large, established corporation over an innovative startup because they protect their careers but don’t seek real innovations. This is the mindset of many European managers. In large European companies, which I wouldn’t like to name, even in large automotive or IT corporations, they have “innovation directors” only on paper, but in reality, Europe has left innovations to the United States without a collective effort.

Investments are also directed to countries. The European Investment Bank or the European Investment Fund distributes money by countries. Local managers try to invest in Slovenia for Slovenia, not cross-border, for example, in Slovenia and Italy. There are not many cross-border investments.

I advocate for my model: I invest in the USA and Europe, while also facilitating a kind of brain drain from Europe to the USA, relocating young, talented people to the USA.

In my opinion, Europe should decide to create clusters that compete with each other. For example, for quantum computing in one place, another quantum cluster somewhere else. Then you can bring a Slovenian scientist interested in quantum technologies to CERN or somewhere else where they work in this cluster. Slovenia itself could become a cluster, say for the financial industry. You could say, let everyone from Europe who wants to change and revolutionize banking come to Slovenia, all the benefits and support for this sector would be here.

Then you would have a cluster that can really compete with the USA, and the solutions would immediately spread across Europe, instead of fighting with a similar company from Belgium doing the same as us.

Who should hear your advice? Politicians, managers, owners?

Politicians, of course, they manage the system. Also, the European Central Bank, the European Investment Bank, the European Investment Fund – they should not be regionally oriented but cluster-oriented.

Recently, there was a big tech conference in Luxembourg. Fund managers who receive money from the European Investment Bank said there that they would not miss the next revolution.

But look at artificial intelligence. DeepMind came from Europe, but now it’s no longer a European company. In biotechnology, the best technology can develop in the United Kingdom, but it quickly comes under the umbrella of American pharmaceutical corporations. So the problem remains. To change this, a major political decision and deeper relationships between European countries are needed.

As a member of the B612 Foundation, which thinks about the long-term future of humanity and the protection of the planet, you often look very far ahead. Do you think the answers for humanity lie in space?

Space is a brilliant source of critical thinking about problems and new solutions that can later be used on Earth. We have seen this in the past: many materials and technologies we use today came from space programs. Robotics, automation, all of this started when we wanted to send something into space, since the sixties. Many of these technologies later transitioned to civilian use.

Another way of thinking about space is that we need the possibility to colonize something, to create an escape option for future generations. We need to think about this today.

Slovenia has many scientists and quite a few startups and companies engaged in space research. We are a small, smart, innovative country, but we don’t create a supportive ecosystem, so the smartest leave for abroad where they can achieve their goals. What do we need to change to keep talents at home?

It’s not just about keeping talents but also creating opportunities for them to come to the country. Look at Estonia, which is similar in size to Slovenia. They created e-government, e-citizenship, the possibility to very easily open a bank account, start a company online… They have established systems that simplify life for people. Whether they always work perfectly is another question; the essential thing is that someone manages and improves them.

I don’t understand why Europe doesn’t do more when the USA under Trump restricts visas and closes doors to many smart people. Where will they go? To where there is nature, a good lifestyle, favorable taxes, and a supportive environment. This was the perfect moment for Europe to say, come to us.

Sometimes you need a mentor to know how to lead people, recognize what skills they lack, and help them learn to publicly deliver messages. A shy person can learn this, but you can’t fix a stupid person, no matter how hard you try.

We need programs that attract people – with tax policy, quality of life, and much more. Slovenia is a very good candidate for something like this. At first glance, it looks great. I haven’t studied your country in detail, but I see a beautiful city here, beautiful countryside, mountains, friendly people – a pleasant place.

But you need a program that makes the country a magnet for smart people. Just as a company founder must be a magnet for investors, a country must be a magnet for people to want to come there and create. Look at Dubai in the broader Middle East region. People go there for very different reasons.

Today, a handful of tech giants control most of the market, capital, and infrastructure. Do small startups really still have a chance in a world where titans play the main role?

Of course. What was Google in 1998? A small company.

Nvidia was a small company for graphics processors, mostly used for games, later for bitcoin, now for artificial intelligence. Today, Nvidia’s value is measured in trillions of dollars. I know a Taiwanese investor who is the largest private shareholder of Nvidia, owning about three million shares. Can you imagine his position today? The point is, they were all small companies once. Hugging Face or OpenAI started as small labs run by a few people. This happens all the time.

I heard you are a diver. I imagine you are interested in the depth of everything you undertake. What motivates you?

The people I work with. Unlike many of my peers, I don’t like being a museum exhibit. I work fast, move fast. I see young faces around me and sober, objective views, which fills me with energy. For some, I might be an energy vampire, drawing energy from them.

Young people get experience from you, you get energy from them – that’s actually an ideal relationship.

Energy begets energy. And probably meetings with people are a condition for longevity, which we all seek. I used to swim a lot, it’s a sport that gives strength. My friend, a 75-year-old engineer, knocked on my conscience, saying that the elixir of youth lies in regular exercise and – excuse me – bedroom pleasures. (laughs) He seriously told me, Sasha, if you skip sports and sex, you won’t win the space game. That’s his recipe for a long life.

So Warren Buffett is wrong when he says that energy lies in money.

Well, that’s one side of it. Another very important thing – and make sure to include this in the interview – is that I never follow just the money. If you do what you love and if what you do truly changes the world, the money will come, and you can change the world even from Ljubljana. If you aim only for money – forget it.

We have used AI tools to assist us with translation into English. The original interview in Slovenian language.