A joint report from Dealflow.eu, Dealroom and EU‑Startups highlights a rapidly expanding European artificial intelligence ecosystem, with more than 4,100 startups aligned with the European Commission’s Apply AI strategy and a enterprise value aggregate of 161 billion euros.
According to the study, these companies raised 17% of European AI venture capital and grew 16 times in the last decade.
The sectors with the highest value are Health & Pharmacy (43 billion euros) and Defense, Security & Space (38 billion), which also concentrate the majority of the most successful cases (unicorns and “thoroughbreds”). Areas such as Environment & Climate, Energy and AgriFood stand out for attracting a higher share of the global share of venture capital in AI; the enterprise value of the Environment & Climate segment has grown 1,725 times since 2015.
The report identifies Germany and France as the main hubs in terms of number of startups and investment. Still, it highlights a structural deficit: in 2025, risk investment in AI in the United States was ten times higher than in the EU27, creating a gap in financial capacity to scale projects.
Another critical point is computational capacity: the EU only has 4.8% of the world’s capacity to train and run AI models. To overcome this limitation, the European Commission proposes a public investment of 20 billion to create four to five AI “gigafactories”, each with more than 100,000 cutting-edge chips, in an attempt to make computing a public good and reinforce technological sovereignty.
Vittorio Sambuy, Senior Investment Analyst at Dealflow.eu, states that “the next challenge is to transform this strategic advantage into greater investment capacity to accelerate innovation”.
Yoram Wijngaarde, founder and CEO of Dealroom, reinforces that “Europe’s advantage — responsible regulation, open-source leadership and strengths in the health, safety and climate sectors — can grow quickly if we close the computing capacity gap”.