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Europe is on track for $3.5B to be invested into deep tech companies in 2017 across more than 600 deals
Capital invested ($B) in and # of deals closed by European deep tech companies
European AI companies have raised more than $4.6B since 2012 across over 1,000 deals
Capital invested ($B) and # of deals by deep tech sub-category
Deep tech companies based in the UK, France and Germany lead the way in attracting capital investment
Capital invested ($B) in European deep tech companies by country
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.
European entrepreneurs continue to form deep tech companies at very high levels, led by companies focused on AI
Number of European deep tech companies founded per category per year
Europe's most promising deep tech companies are raising large rounds and actively choosing to stay independent to continue to build and take on global opportunities
Selected investment rounds raised by European deep tech companies in 2017
| Company | Round size | Lead investor(s) | Round date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Graphcore | $50M | Sequoia Capital | Nov 2017 |
| Ada Health | $47M | Access Industries | Oct 2017 |
| MessageBird | $60M | Accel, Atomico | Oct 2017 |
| Shift Technology | $28M | Accel | Oct 2017 |
| FiveAI | $35M | Lakestar | Sep 2017 |
| Lilium | $90M | Tencent | Sep 2017 |
| Sophia Genetics | $30M | Balderton | Sep 2017 |
| Improbable | $500M | Softbank Vision Fund | Jun 2017 |
| Unity | $400M | Silver Lake | May 2017 |
| Babylon Health | $60M | Kinnevik | Apr 2017 |
European entrepreneurs are catalysing the development of AI technology and the proliferation of AI-powered applications. As AI reaches an inflection point in adoption, early-stage AI companies will empower buyers that have the vision to embrace them and disrupt those that do not. With 900 AI startups (70% of the US total), world-class talent (a quarter of the world’s top 50 universities) and a flourishing ecosystem for entrepreneurship, Europe has much to contribute as we move to a world that is AI-first.
