5.3

The strength of Europe’s tech ecosystem is attractive to a diverse set of investors

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Around 2,000 unique investors have participated in at least one investment round in Europe in 2017, up around 4x compared to 2012

Number of unique institutions that have participated in at least 1 investment round in Europe per year

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.

Timo Rein

  • Pipedrive

A growing number of corporate investors are investing in European tech companies

Number of unique corporate investors per year and number of rounds involving at least one corporate investor

Investors from around the world are coming to Europe to invest. More than 200 unique US investment funds participated in funding rounds in Europe in 2017

Number of unique US Investment funds that have participated in at least 1 investment round in Europe per year

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.

Hiro Tamura

  • Atomico

Asian investors are deploying large sums of capital into European tech companies

$1.8B
invested by Asian investors into European tech companies in 2017 across more than 100 rounds

The level of investment in Europe from Asian investors has grown dramatically in recent years

Capital invested ($M) by and # of deals involving Asian investors

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.

David Thevenon

  • SoftBank