Panathēnea: A gathering of minds on Europe’s tech future

Athens has hosted plenty of spectacles over the centuries, but the city’s first Panathēnea festival offered something fresher than mythology or Mediterranean sun. Run by students and recent graduates, the week-long blend of keynotes, workshops, and street-level networking served as a barometer for how Europe’s next tech cycle might unfold—hopeful, yes, but also clear-eyed about the structural work still ahead.

Panathēnea’s credo is carved into six simple values: be bold, sky’s the limit, be multifaceted, stay foolish, lead with empathy, strive for impact. That ethos permeated every workshop: risk is a feature, craft is a duty, and meaningful scale demands empathy at the core.

1. Mindset first: De-risking risk

Europe’s startup narrative often stalls at the “Series B cliff,” and Panathēnea tackled that head-on. Speakers hammered a single message: without a cultural pivot toward genuine risk sharing, the region will keep exporting its best talent—and its savings—to Silicon Valley.

• Later-stage capital. The data are familiar but still jarring: in the U.S., roughly 70 percent of venture capital originates with pension funds; in Europe, it hovers around seven. Athens-based panels argued that relying solely on early-stage micro-funds breeds premature exits. The remedy? Unlock institutional pools—pension funds, insurance portfolios, sovereign vehicles—that can write minority growth checks big enough to let local champions scale before they’re acquired abroad.
• Angel density. A second lever is the flywheel of founder-turned-investor capital. Greece is now seeing its first generation of repeat entrepreneurs recycle proceeds back into seed rounds, adding hands-on operator guidance to the cap table. It’s slow, but it is happening—and the festival’s curated “collision” sessions turned that momentum into term-sheet conversations in real time.
• A true single market. Finally, founders called out Europe’s regulatory patchwork. Incorporating in six EU states still means six legal teams and six payroll platforms. The ask: an EU-wide one-stop registration passport. If Brussels wants a globally competitive tech stack, simplification is non-negotiable.

The value of a growth fund that takes minority positions is quite vital in this region and country to allow companies to continue their journey and not exit prematurely. Beyond the need for early-stage risk capital, Greece also needs later stage capital and regular private equity to finance companies without them selling out to US companies. The European LP structure is very different from the US. In Europe, big institutions like the EIF and national funds provide a lot of funding. The rest comes from family offices, high net worth individuals, and increasingly, people from the technology side who have had exits.

Some feel the solution is not necessarily relying on pension funds but getting more people to diversify their personal portfolios and invest. However, others strongly argue that pension funds are necessary for later-stage capital. Efforts are being made in Europe to unlock cash from pension funds into private markets, driven by policy initiatives. In France, insurance companies were mandated to put 1% of their assets into tech, which brought significant capital into the ecosystem. There is also discussion about mandating bringing money back to support domestic companies.

Capital follows confidence. Confidence follows proof-of-concept wins. The hardware is already here. Tax incentives, Golden Visas, deep university research… What’s missing is the collective appetite to bet bigger, later, and locally.

2. AI as great equalizer

In Athens, the focus regarding artificial intelligence seemed less on abstract hype and more on demonstrating tangible applications and their real-world impact.

What stood out was a shared insistence on showing, not telling. AI is a tool already at work, applied with urgency, scrutiny, and intent. One of the most recurring themes, and frankly one of the most urgent, was the transition from conversational AI toward what many called agentic systems. The distinction matters. These aren’t chatbots answering your questions. These are systems that can autonomously take action, carry out tasks, and self-orchestrate workflows with minimal human input.

What felt important was that these applications weren’t scattershot. They had depth, vertical relevance, and strategic focus. Take civil protection. A handful of startups showcased wildfire prediction models powered by satellite data and real-time monitoring—a pressing need in Greece’s climate-vulnerable regions.

In health, there was serious talk about the country’s underleveraged national data infrastructure. Greece has a rare asset: curated, centralized datasets from public health screenings. These can serve as a launchpad for clinical-grade health AI, provided there is coordination across institutions.

On the defense front, innovators showed off situational awareness systems and tactical AI applications currently undergoing stress tests through a dedicated innovation center inside the Ministry of Defense. But what gave these technical wins real weight was how openly speakers acknowledged the ethical dimension.

In multiple sessions, concerns were raised about the real-world harms already being accelerated by these tools. Misinformation, deepfakes, the distortion of discourse, and the quiet but growing toll on adolescent mental health… There was a real sense that if Europe does not lead on regulation and ethical safeguards, no one else will.

This idea of an “ethics dividend” came up more than once, and I think it is worth holding onto. If AI is going to reshape everything from logistics to education to governance, then trust becomes infrastructure. And trust is built through transparency, human-centered design, and frameworks that allow us to question what is being built in real time.

3. Founders who cross disciplines

Panathēnea’s most memorable stories were personal.

Jenny Sao, Robyn AI

 A former surgeon who traded the OR for an AI-driven “operating system for becoming.” Jenny Sao’s thesis: emotional disconnection is a public-health crisis, and scalable tech can be a first-line intervention.

The inspiration for Robyn AI stemmed from a deeply personal and profound experience: its founder, Jenny Sao, a former surgeon, witnessed a patient with a brain tumor dying alone in an ICU. This moment crystallized the harsh reality that despite being technologically connected, many people are the loneliest and most disconnected generation. Sao realized that the existing medical system was not equipped to deal with this problem at scale. Building Robyn became her way of upholding the Hippocratic Oath she took as a doctor, vowing to do no harm and help those who come to her, by creating something from the ground up that could solve this problem at scale.

Robyn focuses intensely on “the human at the end of it“. The goal is to help people connect with themselves and evolve. The first product is likened to a baby of Jarvis and Samantha from the movie Her. It understands you, evolves with you, and shows insights to help you become a better, more evolved version of yourself. It’s designed to be like a constant partner in becoming.

The development of Robyn is rooted in Sao’s deep humanistic perspective and her background in neuroscience, psychology, and surgery. She sees building Robyn as upholding her oath to do no harm, arguing that current tech models often divide us because they are built for ad dollars rather than for human well-being. The aim is to build something that empowers connection and is a “massive force for good in the world“.

Robyn AI is building an entire ecosystem focused around emotional connection. Phase one is connecting users to themselves. The product is designed to understand the user so it can show them back to themselves and evolve with them. Robyn is built for the 8 billion people with fundamental biological needs for connection in their DNA, not just for “tech bros”.

Naomie Harris, Core

Ex-behavioral scientists reverse-engineering compatibility instead of courting swipe addiction. Hypnotherapy modules and heart-resonance soundtracks replace the usual gamified churn.

Core’s mission is to be the first dating app to “crack the code of compatibility“. It aims to achieve this by combining ancient and modern science to deliver a compatibility algorithm that actually works, addressing the main complaint of users on existing dating apps who struggle to find compatible partners. The app seeks to know users on a deeply personal level, moving beyond superficial data points to understand their inner core, what makes them motivated, and their private persona, as this is where real relationships happen. Naomie Harris emphasizes that Core will offer a highly curated, individualized selection of truly compatible partners.

Unlike other dating apps that are described as potentially using gamification and dopamine hits that are unsustainable and unhealthy, Core embeds features like hypnotherapy, sacred geomatic patterning, and golden mean music to soothe the nervous system and uplift users, rather than leaving them feeling depleted and disposable. The founder believes that ultimately, nothing is more important than love, and the goal is to shift as many people as possible into a state of love.

Kesha, Smash

A rights-management layer for musicians and, eventually, any creator juggling IP across fragmented platforms.

Smash is a venture founded by artist Kesha, born from her deeply personal experiences in the music industry. It aims to ensure that what happened to her never happens to anyone else. The mission is to protect artists and creators.

The inspiration behind creating Smash stems from Kesha’s own decade-long legal battle to regain the rights to her voice. After signing a contract very young and not fully realizing what it meant, she found herself in a situation that became intolerable and inhumane, spending 10 years fighting in litigation to get her rights back.

“So, I have spent the past 10 years in litigation fighting like hell to regain the rights to my voice back. I regained the rights to my voice back. back for the first time in my adult life about one year ago as a 37 years old woman. But I got this freedom and I realized this fight’s not over. I need to make sure that what happened to me never happens anyone else,” Kesha said.

Smash is being built as an ecosystem or platform for artists. Key features and aspects mentioned include:

• A marketplace where artists can hire one another.
• Safe and transparent contracting, designed so artists don’t get taken advantage of or messed up if they don’t fully understand what they are signing. The infrastructure is being built to erase ambiguity in contracts from the beginning.
• Matchmaking to connect artists with similar interests and musical vocabulary. For example, a pop star with an idea but no instrumental skills could be matched with a guitarist.
• Smash Studio, described as a “Zoom room” where artists can collaborate remotely, such as a guitarist recording their part and a vocalist adding theirs, to create a demo instantly on the platform. Everything created in this studio is documented, and the artist retains the rights.
• A downstream network or vetted network of professionals, including artist-friendly labels, that artists can choose to work with for distribution. The artist gets to choose and has consent over where their art and voice goes while retaining their rights.
• A focus on community and support among artists, providing a localized place for them to connect and help each other, which the founder felt was lacking in her own early career. This community network can also allow artists to discuss the reputation of people they are considering working with.

Smash is currently just getting started. It has a small team and is in the process of fundraising and building the team out. The founder sees it as a “revolution”. Mentorship is considered important for founders, and Smash aims to protect “young, naive, talented, beautiful artists“.

The vision for Smash in 5 years is to have millions of people using it to create, play, and make art. Feeling safe is seen as the foundation for creativity, something the founder experienced for a majority of her life. The potential for Smash is seen as extending beyond music into other creator communities, such as film, or even potentially startups, as the ecosystem model could work for various types of creators.

Notes from Panathēnea

None of these startups pitched themselves as silver bullets.

They pitched grit: vision married to execution, diversity positioned as advantage, and a willingness to iterate in public. Underlying these ventures is a capital thesis too big to ignore, diverse investors back diverse solutions that outperform.

• Europe doesn’t need to copy Silicon Valley, it needs to bet on itself. Athens proved that what’s missing isn’t talent or tools, but the conviction to scale local wins with local capital.
• Agentic AI is here, but trust is the true infrastructure. Without transparent design and ethical safeguards, even the smartest systems will struggle to earn public confidence.
• Human-centered design isn’t a UX trend, it’s a leadership model. The most resonant startups didn’t just solve problems, they built from pain with purpose.
• The real tech scene doesn’t live on stage, it lives in collisions. Progress happened in the moments between the keynotes, where diverse minds challenged and sharpened each other.
• Innovation without inclusion is just replication. The boldest ideas came from those who weren’t “supposed” to build and that’s exactly why they matter.