Dear friends,
☀️ Happy 2026!
Last year is behind us, with all its ups and downs. We will get back with a deep dive into some of those in our annual 💶 European Learning & Work Funding Report that we are preparing to launch in the next couple of weeks 👀. Halfway through January, we are gearing up for an intense few days of activities during the Bett conference in London next week, to be followed by some big and exciting changes 💎 on our side – stay tuned!
For now, a short update on activities, including:
Insights – Get ready for the European Learning & Work Funding Report 2026
Events – Product For Learning London Meetup
Selected News from the Portfolio – LabLabee joins NVIDIA’s Inception Program
Thanks for reading!
Best,
The Brighteye Team
🔎 INSIGHTS
💶 New Year – New European Funding Report
Our annual European Learning & Work Funding Report is in the making - launching at 📣 the end of January!!
What to expect from the Report?
📍 2025 in numbers - Funding and Deals overview
📍 Reframing Edtech - from Education to Learning & Work
📍 Growth, Funding & Ecosystem Trends
📍 Regional Nuances
📍 Exits and Signals from Investors
📍 Our Predictions for 2026
Want to be among the first to get the report in your 📬 inbox?
🧠 AI Companions & Cognitive Effects
How will AI companions understand us, not just serve us?
After publishing our report “Me, Myself, and My AI: The Rise of AI Companions,” we were excited to read US fund Forerunner’s “From Network Effects to Cognitive Effects” shortly after.
The core argument in our thesis is that AI is moving beyond assistants and tools toward companions: systems that actively engage, motivate, and help change behaviour. Kirsten Green’s lens 🔍 for Forerunner frames cognitive effects as the next great source of product defensibility - a successor to network effects and scale. Instead of a value that increases with more users (a classic network effect), cognitive effects accrue per user, based on how much a product understands someone’s unique context and pattern. Products with strong cognitive effects don’t just get hard to leave because of inertia; they become meaningfully woven into how people think and act.
So, we agree that companions embody cognitive effects. While we zone in on what these companions are and how they might play out across verticals like health, finance, and education, Forerunner articulates the macro-dynamic that makes this approach foundational to how software will win in the 2025–2035 decade.
❓Want to learn more❓
🎪 EVENTS
🎈 Our Annual Bett-week Mixer
We can’t wait to host another London Edtech Mixer 🇬🇧 during Bett next week, alongside Owl Ventures, Educapital and Campbell Lutyens, on Wednesday 21 January. For the third time, we are bringing together investors, founders, and operators from across the Learning & Work community for an evening of focused conversations, drinks and light bites.
Space is limited, and following two (beyond) sold-out 🍭 editions, now is the time to register interest!
👀 Funding Report Sneak Peek at Bett
We are excited to have partnered with the team at Bett on presenting a sneak peek of the upcoming European Learning & Work Funding Report during the event at London’s ExCeL next week. Join us at the Innovation Theatre on Thursday 22 January to hear Rhys Spence, our Head of Platform & Research, and author of the Report, present a:
Short, sharp topline data on global and European funding flows in 2025 vs previous years - including investment totals, biggest rounds, funding trends, most active investors, and more
Brief call-out on market expansion beyond classic EdTech into skills, workplace learning, productivity. and “just-in-time” learning
🧩 Product for Learning Meetup with Toby Mather
In the first Product For Learning session of 2026, we are proud to partner with Matt Walton in welcoming Toby Mather, Product Director at Novakid (& exited founder of Lingumi) to share his journey with a selected group of learning change makers.
Join us in London on Wednesday 3 February, to hear Toby reflect on questions including:
Will AI tutoring disrupt live tutoring companies?
How do you even build an AI Tutor?
What is good retention for an AI learning product?
How do live tutoring companies adapt to the risk of disruption?
There will also be breakout discussions to get to know others building new learning products. And 🍕 pizza!
🔗 Register now to secure your spot!
📣 SELECTED NEWS FROM THE PORTFOLIO
📹 The Final Festive Calendar Video
Every Sunday in December, we had the joy of sharing a video catch-up with some of our portfolio founders. For the final one, we sat down with Samir of LabLabee - on a mission to deliver powerful, practical AI solutions that help telco teams learn, test, and operate smarter - to hear some of the highlights ✨ of 2025 and what they are most excited about for in this new year.
And ICYM the first three:
🎈Festive Calendar Week 1 – Gunnar Windsand Sem - installer.com
🎈Festive Calendar Week 2 – Jaime Castillo - Shakers
🎈Festive Calendar Week 3 – Eduardo Freire Rodrigues – UpHill Health
🏎️ AI-acceleration for LabLabee
Staying with LabLabee, we’re also proud to learn that the French portco, has been accepted into the NVIDIA Inception Program, supporting companies building the next generation of AI-driven innovation. Joining the program will allow access to cutting-edge AI infrastructure, developer tools, and expertise to accelerate the product roadmap and strengthen their AI capabilities for the telecom industry. Well done, team!
🇵🇹 UpHill at South Summit Scaleup Series Lisbon
UpHill Health Founder and CEO Eduardo Rodrigues is also among the speakers 🎤 as the South Summit arrives in Lisbon on their Scaleup Series tour in two weeks. Catch him and an impressive lineup of speakers exploring Growth Funding, Going Global and Powering the Ecosystem on 29 January!
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