For some years, we didn’t look to European market investors with hungry eyes because we didn’t see the type of investor we could work with, but over the last few years we’ve seen a number of investors starting to attract more interest because they clearly have good ambitions, and that alone gives me a feeling that there’s cause for optimism.

European tech continues to strengthen and diversify geographically, driving not only cross-border investment activity but also increased interest from our VC peers in the US. World class European companies such as MessageBird, Graphcore, Monzo, TransferWise, Automile and Deliveroo have all attracted US investors in 2017, proving that European tech is not only on fire at home but also abroad. This provides an interesting opportunity moving forward for increased collaboration between US and European VCs which, ultimately, continues to provide even greater runway for European founders to build truly global category leading companies from right here at home.

The next stage of the Information Revolution is underway, made possible by rapid technological progress that is changing every industry and creating new ones. Europe is particularly well placed to take advantage. Last year, this report highlighted the growing strength of deep tech in Europe. This was no surprise to us at SoftBank. In the last 18 months alone we invested in some of Europe’s most exciting deep tech companies, ARM and Improbable.