Nick Clegg takes on venture capital role alongside Meta AI scientist Yann LeCun

Sir Nick Clegg is becoming a venture capitalist, with the former Meta executive and UK deputy prime minister taking on a new role as an investor in European technology groups.

Clegg, who left Facebook’s parent company as its head of global affairs earlier this year, told the Financial Times’ Global Boardroom event that he has joined London-based Hiro Capital as a general partner.

According to people familiar with the matter, the firm is looking to raise a new fund — dubbed Hiro III — worth more than €500mn. Yann LeCun, who recently announced that he would soon leave his post as Meta’s chief AI scientist, is also joining the firm as an adviser. 

The new fund will invest between €5mn and €50mn into companies in the UK and Europe working on spatial artificial intelligence, robotics, longevity, gaming, space and defence. The firm aims to announce its first investment from the newly raised fund in the first half of 2026.

Clegg’s connections to the technology sector as well as governments will help Hiro Capital build successful companies in Europe, said Luke Alvarez, the firm’s founder and managing general partner. 

“Much of the theme in Europe over the last couple of years clearly has been about more technological geostrategic autonomy,” said Alvarez.

“Having an understanding of how government and regulators work is relevant to helping our portfolio flourish and building global leading companies from Europe,” he added.  

Clegg told the FT conference that Europe had a “very, very profound dilemma, which is that we’re not only completely dependent on US tech . . . [but] when we have good people with good ideas, we export them to the US”.

He said the idea of the Hiro fund was to focus on “those sectors where Europe has deep, deep sort of academic and research laboratory expertise”.

LeCun, who is leaving Meta at the end of the year to start his own company, will help the fund assess investments in AI companies. 

“We are entering a new phase of AI — an era of systems which can understand the physical world, have persistent memory and which can reason and plan complex actions,” said LeCun.

“Hiro’s track record of investing in spatial technologies, 3D tech, wearables and gaming means they are exceptionally well placed to capitalise on this new wave of opportunity in Europe,” he added.