Cambridge entrepreneur and VC Dr Hermann Hauser is mobilising forces in the EU to create a €100 billion fighting fund to protect European life science and hi-tech businesses from being lured to the US or China and into foreign sovereignty where they could become vulnerable to asset stripping.

Dr Hauser felt it necessary to broaden his campaign to protect Arm Cambridge jobs and technology and associated UK bragging rights in light of its proposed $40bn acquisition by US giant NVIDIA. 

Not content with helping the UK government formulate policy on protecting Arm, he says the issue has now taken on much wider significance.

Dr Hauser joined the engine room of the European Innovation Council in July 2019, as exclusively reported in Business Weekly, and the EIC has propelled itself into the front line of this new sovereignty campaign.

Dr Hauser said: “This has become part of a much bigger issue of technology sovereignty and we have formed a task force at the EIC to address the issue of scaling our critical technologies in Europe so the companies behind them do not have to go to the US or China to become global players.

“America has just started a $100bn program for US technology independence and we are lobbying Europe for a €100bn fund to do the same for Europe.”

Dr Hauser reiterated a point he made to Business Weekly when he joined the EIC’s upper echelon: “Arm’s first CEO, Robin Saxby, has always maintained that when the fledgling business was trying to make ends meet in the early days it only got through the crisis thanks to the financial support of Europe’s Open Microprocessor Initiative.”

Despite the UK government’s headstrong rush towards Brexit, Dr Hauser remains utterly convinced that Britain needs to lean on the trading power of the EU as a buffer to being exploited by the super powers of American and China.

The European Innovation Council is continuing to leverage technology innovation across the EU to drive further significant investment opportunities.

With the UK government set to exit Europe, alienating China by banning Huawei from involvement in Britain’s 5G rollout and potentially backing the wrong horse in the fight for the White House, Dr Hauser says Britain needs all the help it can get to protect its business crown jewels from being lured away.