Signal Scale-up and venture capital gaps push European start-ups abroad

Summary

No company founded in the EU in the past 50 years has passed a market value of 100 billion euros, whereas all six US firms worth more than one trillion euros were created in that period. Of 147 European unicorns created between 2008 and 2021, 40 later moved their headquarters out of Europe, mostly to the United States. Draghi's data put the US-EU venture funding gap at about 80 percent at seed stage, 73 percent at early stage and 82 percent at late stage. The EU raises only about 5 percent of global venture capital funds, against 52 percent for the United States and 40 percent for China. AI start-ups based in the EU receive 6 percent of global funding compared with 61 percent for US firms, and EU quantum firms attract 5 percent of global private funding against 50 percent for the United States.