Much acclaim (and money) has been heaped on Elon Musk for building businesses in industries as diverse as electric cars, space rockets, brain computer implants and AI models. The manic South African-born entrepreneur is an all-ranting, all-tweeting one-man conglomerate with a magic capitalistic touch, conjuring up companies with a combined value of more than $3tn.

Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify, is charting a different path. Rather than building a personal empire across disparate industries, Ek is investing his wealth and influence into a new European dream — backing deep-tech startups across the continent through his investment vehicle Prima Materia. His approach is quieter, more collaborative, and explicitly aimed at fixing Europe's innovation deficit.

Ek's strategy involves funding ambitious founders in areas like defence, energy, and biotech — sectors where Europe has talent but lacks capital. By recycling Spotify's success into the ecosystem, he hopes to create a flywheel effect that could rival Silicon Valley's density. The bet is that Europe's next giants won't come from a single visionary, but from a network of supported entrepreneurs building foundational technologies.