Few investors can claim to have witnessed every major tech wave of the past four decades. Hermann Hauser co-founded Acorn Computers in 1978 and helped create Arm, one of the world's most important chip companies. Today, through Amadeus Capital, he invests in Europe's top hard-tech startups.

"The value created by this technological revolution could surpass any previous tech revolution in human history," Hauser says, but he warns the ride will be a "rollercoaster." What does he mean? He notes that valuations for some companies have "clearly detached from fundamentals," and highlights risks in recent round-trip financing deals. However, he believes the industry leaders are unlikely to vanish. Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, with their massive cash reserves, can weather industry turbulence even if market expectations are recalibrated.

As a creator of Arm, Hauser commands authoritative insight into the semiconductor space. Over the past few years, chip companies have been among the stock market's biggest winners, as investors piled into the "picks and shovels" of the AI boom—the upstream infrastructure. But the landscape is shifting. AI is now expensive to run, chips are difficult to cool, memory prices remain high, and bottlenecks exist across the supply chain. This is forcing the industry to rethink computing architecture.

Hauser highlights emerging technologies like in-memory computing and optical computing, which aim to drastically reduce energy consumption from data transfers between processors and memory. He argues these changes could be as significant as the architectural breakthroughs that once let Arm challenge established chip giants. "I never expected AI to drive such a fundamental shift in computer architecture," he says.

A major figure in European tech, Hauser has a unique perspective on Europe's role in the AI revolution. Can Europe compete with the US? Hauser is firm: European companies have the innovation and talent to do so. But a key challenge remains: European startups struggle to scale from small companies into globally competitive giants. This dilemma feeds into a deeper theme Hauser frequently ponders: technological sovereignty. He worries that Europe's key technologies, from AI models to semiconductor design software, remain highly dependent on overseas suppliers.

He says close cooperation with allies is essential, but in an era of rising geopolitical conflict and export controls, technological dependency carries risks. His conclusion is blunt: Europe should maintain its partnership with the US, but it must not become a "technological colony of America."