The ground under sustainability has shifted. Regulation is expanding in some markets and retreating in others. Investor mandates are diverging into unknown territory, and geopolitical complexity is forcing us to re-examine European sovereignty and competitiveness in ways that have no clear precedent. Sustainability frameworks, built for a more stable, globalised world, are struggling to keep pace with the rapid advancement of new technologies. For founders trying to build and scale responsible, category-defining companies, the uncertainty makes it hard to know where to focus.

Moments like this call for clarity and practical questions: What does responsible business design look like for a modern European technology company? What is genuinely material, commercially relevant, and achievable at its stage? And how can we better support founders as they navigate new challenges around trust, transparency, and responsibility?

At Atomico, these are the questions we explore through what we call Conscious Scaling — the practice of building responsibility into a business from the outset, not as a constraint on growth, but as one of the conditions for achieving it. Companies should be proud not only of what they are building, but of how they build it. This looks different for every company and every sector. For some it's the responsible deployment of AI. For others it's the resilience of their supply chains. For many, genuine sustainability priorities are narrow, and strong corporate governance is the right place to focus. The ones who lead are the ones who connect sustainability to what actually drives their business: revenue, retention, risk, and resilience. 

The founders we partner with consistently show that responsible business practices and commercial ambition are not in conflict. The engagement we see across our portfolio, at every stage, continues to expand. And so does the body of case studies that show, in concrete terms, what the commercial value of sustainability looks like.