In the first half of this year, startups from Europe raised venture capital of 43.8 billion euros. Thus, after only 6 months it was possible to surpass the record of 38 billion euros reached in the entire year 2020.

The increase in investments in European startups did not go hand in hand with an increase in the number of venture deals. While in 2020 there were 5200 such deals, the first 6 months of this year brought only about 2700 rounds of financing. In practice, this means a big jump in the amount per individual investment in technology companies from Europe.

Examples of large investments in the first half of the year include Swedish company Klarna (offering a “buy-now-pay-later” service, i.e. a delayed payment service for purchases made), which raised $1.6 billion during two funding rounds, German company Trade Republic (a stock trading application) with $900 million and British payment provider Checkout.com with $450 million.

This trend is very positive for the European startup market, where you can find more and more unicorns, i.e. startup businesses valued at more than $1 billion. However, companies of the scale of American and Chinese tech giants are still missing.

Source: cnbc.com