Insights
Notes from the space between funding and building.
Applied AI without the marketing gloss, how evaluation actually works, what the funding landscape is signalling, and what any of it costs to run.
Funding landscape
24 August 2026
Competition, not score inflation: what is raising Horizon Europe funding thresholds
Practitioners say grants got harder to win and blame AI-polished proposals. Call-level data from 1,332 topics points elsewhere: submissions rose 41%, grants stayed flat - competition, not better proposals, raised the bar.
33 min read
Innovation economics
23 August 2026
The productivity gain that never reaches the P&L
A European operator's guide: eight gates, the numbers behind each, and how to tell a real AI case from an expensive one
16 min read
Innovation economics
4 August 2026
The ROI question everyone skips
Most AI business cases are built backwards, from a solution that already has a champion. Here is the version that survives a second budget cycle.
4 min read
Funding landscape
28 July 2026
Reading an Impact section the way an evaluator does
Most proposals lose points in Impact, not in Excellence. The reason is structural, and it is fixable in a week.
4 min read
Applied AI
14 July 2026
What an agentic system actually costs to run
Demos are priced per call. Production is priced per task, and the difference between the two is where most AI business cases quietly fail.
3 min read
Innovation economics
30 June 2026
Build versus buy for AI, decided in three questions
The decision is usually made on instinct and defended afterwards. Three questions settle it faster, and survive the next budget review.
3 min read