VivaDrive at the Polish-German Economic Forum in Berlin: how to build European innovation champions

VivaDrive CEO Mateusz Maj joined the Polish-German Economic Forum in Berlin, organised with PAIH and AHK, alongside representatives of both governments and industry — including Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs, the German Eastern Business Association, BASF Polska, and members of the European Parliament.

Why the US and China are pulling ahead

The discussion started from a simple diagnosis. The United States and China accelerate innovation and AI for four reasons: demand-side regulation — government as the first customer, one jurisdiction, fast pilots and scaling; growth capital — large late-stage rounds and a liquid path from seed to IPO; compute — easy access to GPU/HPC power and tooling; and talent — mobile specialists and competitive stock-option schemes.

What Europe needs

Europe's answer, argued Maj, should be built on five pillars: technological sovereignty — a local-first approach in public and private procurement: EU-law vendors, EU data residency, open standards and portability, and hard anti-lock-in clauses, so value stays in Europe; growth capital — strengthening ETCI and channelling part of pension savings into late-stage funds; compute — GPU credits on European infrastructure (AI Factories / EuroHPC) with fast rollout; talent — a unified ESOP and a "Talent Schengen" enabling cross-border hiring in 30 days; and a single market in practice — a "Startup/Scale Passport": one authorisation to operate in all 27 member states.

Germany: the natural partner for mobility innovation

For a company like VivaDrive, the Polish-German axis is not diplomatic decoration — it is the core of the European mobility market. Germany is Poland's largest trading partner and Europe's automotive leader; Poland is one of Europe's fastest-growing technology and fleet markets. The transformation ahead of the automotive industry — electrification, fleet data, AI — will not be won by any European country alone. Building European innovation champions starts with neighbours who build together.