Latest news with #EuropeanTech
The Verge
02-07-2025
- Business
- The Verge
Made in Europe.
Posted Jul 2, 2025 at 11:00 AM UTC Swiss minimalist phone manufacturer Punkt says it's working with German company Gigaset on a line of 'fully European-built mobile devices,' with the first to launch in Q4 this year.
Forbes
30-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
$40 Mic To $650 Million Fund: How Harry Stebbings Is Rewiring European Venture
"Venture is about finding, picking, winning and helping. And none of it matters if you can't win," says Harry Stebbings, who founded London-based firm 20VC. courtesy of Stebbings I n a dimly lit podcast studio in London, Harry Stebbings–clad in his uniform of short shorts and running shoes–sits across Severin Hacker, cofounder of the $23 billion (market cap) language-learning app Duolingo. Stebbings, the host and the proud Brit, can't help but bring up the state of the European tech ecosystem. Hacker doesn't hesitate: 'I can guarantee Duolingo would not have been able to raise any money in Europe. We had zero revenue for the first five years. No European would have invested.' That sentiment is exactly why Stebbings is in the room. At 28 years old, the podcaster-turned-venture-capitalist manages some $650 million through his firm, 20VC. It's rapidly become one of Europe's most active firms, drawing capital from powerhouses like Rothschild Capital and MIT, and boasting a portfolio that includes unicorns like $2 billion Mercor and $1.3 billion LinkTree. His ambition? To be Europe's top early stage investor. And make sure the next Duolingo doesn't have to go transatlantic to find cash. "European governments do not understand that we are in a war for talent," Stebbings tells Forbes . "Europe has more than enough money. What it doesn't have is great regulatory frameworks or a great VC ecosystem." London is home to heavyweights like Balderton Capital, an early backer of $45 billion fintech giant Revolut, and Atomico, which was among the first to invest in Sweden's Klarna. But when Klarna gears up for its IPO, it's the New York Stock Exchange that gets the nod. British semiconductor giant Arm made a similar move, opting for a $54.5 billion IPO on the Nasdaq. The disparity in private markets is just as stark: In 2024, venture capitalists poured $209 billion into the U.S, compared to just $51 billion in Europe. Whether it's public or private, says PitchBook analyst Navina Rajan, the U.S. is simply more bullish and Europe still far more conservative. This lack of risk appetite in Europe is where Stebbings thinks 20VC can find its niche. He bypasses the usual waiting game for polished pitch decks and positive margins, backing founders based purely on ambition. Now might be his moment. As U.S. markets grapple with political uncertainty—trade wars and real wars alike—cracks are starting to show. Markets are fluctuating, valuations are falling, IPOs are stalling. Andreessen Horowitz even closed its U.K. office just a year after opening it. 'The competition [in Europe] is so weak. If we are insanely aggressive and ambitious, we should be the best seed and Series A player,' Stebbings says. 'Don't get me wrong, we can play and win in the Valley, too, but do I want to bet my whole strategy on beating Mark Andreessen when he's going to drive founders to his house?' S tebbings was 13 when he watched The Social Network and found his calling. He didn't see himself in Zuckerberg, but in Peter Thiel, the investor behind the scenes who made Facebook happen. A self-described 'friendless' teenager in suburban London, Stebbings fell in love with venture capital the way some kids get into comic books. After graduating high school, he traded lecture halls for a $40 microphone and transformed his childhood bedroom into a makeshift studio. Instead of wasting money, and years, on a business degree, he'd start a podcast and learn on the job. Soon he was cold-emailing Silicon Valley royalty and interviewing them firsthand. His pitch was simple: "All I need is 20 minutes.' The first guest on The Twenty Minute VC was Guy Kawasaki, Apple's former chief evangelist. Stebbings' outreach was unrelenting—53 emails before Marc Andreessen said yes. Within a few years, he had accumulated wisdom from almost every major VC. The podcast's popularity earned him a spot on the Forbes Under 30 Europe list in 2019, more than 100 million downloads and a direct line into the private capital elite. The pivotal shift came when his mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The show started tapping sponsors and generating some revenue about two years in, but it was time to make real money. Stebbings reached out to the powerful friends he made along the way (we're talking founders of companies like Spotify and Robinhood) via WhatsApp. $200,000 here and $250,000 there. Within three days, he raised his first fund of $8.3 million in 2020. The podcast didn't go away. Instead, it became 20VC's most valuable asset. Clips regularly go viral, racking up as many as 8 million views on YouTube Shorts. On the audio front, the podcast saw 25 million downloads last month alone. Weekly episodes featuring guests like Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman, and founders from 20VC's own portfolio, now double as deal flow for the firm and baked-in exposure for the founders. "What intrigued us was he had a very differentiated model, bringing part of that media business alongside 20VC," says Maggie Fanari, CEO of J. Rothschild Capital Management. "If you talk to Harry, you're going to end up talking about what the world will look like five years from now. That differentiation in his thinking is what will continue to make him very successful. He's top 5%." Rothschild and MIT backed 20VC's $400 million third fund last year, marking the largest raise for an early stage European VC. The fund closed in just four months, and was a significant leap from its $140 million predecessor. The relationships were years in the making, but Fanari says Stebbings' track record–and especially his network–spoke for itself. To attract top founders, 20VC offers more than money. It's created three internal subfunds—20Sales, 20Product and 20Growth—each staffed with eight experienced operators from tech giants like OpenAI, Spotify and LinkedIn. When a founder receives a term sheet from 20VC, they also get access to a group of expert mentors. "It's particularly important if you're a European founder," says Richard Hollingsworth, founder of AI startup Fyxer, a 20VC portfolio company. "What you're getting is a local investor with an American mindset, and an American network." With 20VC's check sizes capped at $15 million, Stebbings must move with exceptional speed. Case in point: When Hollingsworth flew to San Francisco to raise his seed round, Stebbings called him mid-trip, led a $10 million round, and even secured Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff as a co-investor to sweeten the deal. Stebbings is nothing if not consistent. Each day, he's up at 8:15, on back-to-back calls by 8:30, powerwalking through Hyde Park—20,000 steps logged before most people check their email. Office till 7 p.m, then more meetings on foot. Dinner's always the exact same: sashimi from Notting Hill Fish Shop, also his only meal of the day. From 9 p.m to 1 a.m, he works from home. Then it's a lit joint, a TikTok scroll worthy of an investigative reporter studying analytics and trends, and notes sent to his team at 2 a.m. His weekends? He'll run 26 miles on Saturdays, then walk 26 more alongside his mother on Sundays. Both days end at the podcast studio. While the schedule has still kept the young man single, 20VC has now secured a stake in nearly every flashy, young European startup. AI software startup Lovable, which reached $17 million in revenue within three months; Slay, a Forbes Under 30 company creating consumer apps across gaming, and BeReal, the social media platform which recently exited for $500 million. He's claimed his share of U.S. startups too, from the $3 billion (valuation) startup Remote to AI job recruitment platform Mercor. Many of the portfolio companies had little to no revenue when Stebbings first invested. Some have since pivoted entirely from their original ideas. His investment decisions hinge on the founder. One of his go-to questions: What was your first job? The ideal answer usually reveals early signs of entrepreneurship. If a founder isn't 'unhealthily obsessed' (quite like himself), he walks away. Meanwhile, the competition is multi-billion-dollar funds. "The future of venture capital will be Chanel and Walmart," Stebbings says about his smaller check size. "Walmart is Sequoia, SoftBank … walls of money that are almost infinite in supply. Chanel has a very specific customer base and a very precise product." 20VC, he implies, will be the Chanel of venture capital. N ow, in a bold expansion of his thesis, Stebbings has launched a venture called Project Europe with CEO Kitty Mayo. The initiative aims to spot European talent early on and keep them on home turf. The goal is to invest $200,000 into founders under the age of 25, each with ideas capable of becoming billion-dollar businesses. Launching Project Europe was surprisingly quick. Yet again, Stebbings messaged friends across his extensive VC network via WhatsApp. This time, within weeks, he raised $10 million from nearly 200 European founders, including those behind Klarna, GitHub and Duolingo. Each of these investors will be paired with a mentee, the first of which has already been selected. And despite it being the perfect vehicle for 20VC's deal flow in the long run, Stebbings swears that's not the point. "This is about telling the world that great entrepreneurs do come from Europe," he says. "A kid in the suburbs of London started a podcast with a posh British accent and now manages three quarters of a billion dollars. I'm proof anyone can achieve their dreams with a lot of hard work and low IQ."
Bloomberg
20-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Live Q&A: Can Europe's Tech Startups Take On the US and China?
Tom Mackenzie Aisha S Gani Christina Kyriasoglou From generative AI to autonomous vehicles, European tech startups are breaking new ground — and grappling with the challenges posed by US tariffs, hostility to the continent's regulatory regime and fierce competition from China. Bloomberg Television's Tom Mackenzie, host of Bloomberg Tech: Europe, speaks with Mark Bergen, Aisha Gani and Christina Kyriasoglou on Friday, June 20 at 1.30 p.m. BST / 8.30 a.m. ET about the opportunities and headwinds for the region's innovators. Bloomberg digital subscribers and Terminal clients have the chance to ask our team questions in real-time. This conversation will be recorded and be made available to listen and share.
Wall Street Journal
12-06-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
A French Startup Wants to End Europe's Reliance on American AI Tools - Tech News Briefing
Two-year old French startup Mistral wants to show that European AI can compete with American and Chinese companies that dominate the industry. WSJ tech reporter Sam Schechner reports from the Viva Technology conference in Paris. Plus, the United Nations estimates half of all people on Earth experience severe water scarcity at least one month of the year. WSJ tech columnist Christopher Mims tells us about a 1960s-era technology that might hold a key to easing that problem. Sign up for the WSJ's free Technology newsletter.
Bloomberg
09-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
25 EURO STARTUPS TO WATCH By Yazhou Sun, Mark Bergen and Amy Thomson June 9, 2025 at 1:00 AM EDT
These are the innovative European companies breaking new ground in tech this year. By Yazhou Sun, Mark Bergen and Amy Thomson Illustrations by Ori Toor June 9, 2025 at 01:00 AM EDT Share this article Bloomberg and Founders Forum have combined forces this year to highlight the European companies and founders aiming to have an impact on a global scale. We tapped influential names in European tech — hailing from venture capital, university foundries and the C-suite of some of the biggest startups — to help us create a list of nominees. We want to put a spotlight on the inventors and the builders, making bold bets when many companies are hunkering down, trying to make sense of a new world order. US tariffs and increasing hostility toward Europe's regulatory regime have shaken markets and investor confidence. Still, venture capital deals are on track to gain for the first time since 2021, according to first-quarter data from Pitchbook. Our list highlights both household names and companies that are just emerging, breaking ground in fields including generative AI, space, autonomous vehicles and video games. Bloomberg's editorial team chose the top 25 with an eye on companies that could fundamentally change their industries and the way we move through the world. Amber Therapeutics Country UK Founders Aidan Crawley, Tim Denison, Stefan De Wachter and Charles Knowles Year Founded 2021 Business Nerve Center This medical technology group, founded in 2021, makes devices to help treat nervous system diseases. The UK-based company relies on so-called neuromodulation therapy. Its Picostim system acts directly on nerves to sense and alter the body's responses. Its first breakthrough has been in treating mixed urinary incontinence in women — a complex condition that doesn't have a singular treatment — using electrodes implanted near a key pelvic nerve. The Oxford University spinoff raised $100 million last year as it works toward US Food and Drug Administration approval of its device. Cradle Country Netherlands/Switzerland Founders Stef van Grieken, Eli Bixby, Elise de Reus, Harmen van Rossum and Jelle Prins Year Founded 2021 Business Cell Factories The ability to engineer specialized proteins is important for developing new vaccines and other medical treatments, sustainable materials and lab-grown foods. But it's historically been expensive and error-prone. Cradle has built a platform that enables scientists to use generative AI to create proteins with desired functions beyond those that exist in nature — faster and more cost effectively. The company was founded in 2021 and counts Johnson & Johnson and Novo Nordisk as customers. In November the startup raised $73 million in a round led by IVP, to expand its wet lab and scale up the platform to target more therapeutic and diagnostic companies. DeepL Country Germany Founders Jaroslaw Kutylowski Year Founded 2017 Business Machine Translation Last valued at $2 billion, this German AI translation startup keeps pace with far-better-resourced rivals such as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI. The Cologne-based company is squarely focused on machine translation, with an efficient model tailor-made for the purpose, and claims to be more accurate than its rivals. It sells a paid version of its service to tens of thousands of businesses, including law firms and consulting companies. In November it launched a voice-to-text service, which automatically translates conversations in about 30 languages — in person or online — in real time. Users of DeepL's mobile app can put their device in the middle of the table and it will display subtitles in two languages. Such subtitles can also appear on video calls. Dream Games Country Turkey Founders Soner Aydemir Ikbal Namli, Hakan Sağlam, Eren Şengül and Serdar Yilmaz Year Founded 2019 Business Bigger Than Candy Crush As Istanbul emerges as a top global hub for mobile gaming, Dream Games has become local royalty. The studio, formed in 2019, designed Royal Match, the tile-matching mobile app that has overtaken Candy Crush to become the world's top puzzle game by revenue. CEO Soner Aydemir previously worked for Peak, a Turkish games developer acquired by Zynga. In May, Dream Games announced an investment that will make private equity firm CVC Capital Partners its sole equity partner. The $2.5 billion debt and equity deal values the company at $5 billion. Einride Country Sweden Founders Robert Falck, Filip Lilja and Linnéa Kornehed Falck Year Founded 2016 Business Keeps on Truckin' The company's futuristic white electric trucks are among the first autonomous freight carriers to be approved for use on public roads. Einride uses AI to chart the most efficient route for its trucks, which can drive around the clock, overseen by a remote (human) operator. The trucks even load and unload autonomously. inride made its first autonomous delivery — moving goods for GE Appliances from a factory to a warehouse in Tennessee — in 2023. Last year the company announced agreements with Dubai-based DP World to electrify its fleet for shipping between terminals at Jebel Ali Port, and it also has deals with PepsiCo, Lidl and Mars. ElevenLabs Country UK/US Founders Piotr Dabkowski and Mati Staniszewski Year Founded 2022 Business Who Said That? Anyone who's ever sat through a badly dubbed movie — a population that includes pretty much every European — understands the business case for ElevenLabs. It uses AI voice cloning to produce highly realistic audio — with emotion, depth and convincing accents — in dozens of languages. In addition to dubbing films, its software is used to create virtual customer service agents and to produce audiobooks and podcasts. ElevenLabs raised $180 million in January, tripling its valuation to $3.3 billion. However, it's success isn't blemish-free. The company has said its technology has been used by some 'for malicious purposes.' The kind of tools it offers have helped fuel the rise of deepfakes, which are increasingly used in scams and political disinformation efforts. Exotec Country France Founders Romain Moulin and Renaud Heitz Year Founded 2015 Business Warehouse Robots A facility using Exotec's modular, robotic warehouse system looks a lot like the inside of a beehive. The company fills a warehouse from floor to ceiling with specialized, customizable racks that its Skypod robots climb through to store and collect crates. The system can deliver parcels to workers to fill orders and sort packages and allows warehouse managers to monitor performance. The French company offers specialized, temperature-controlled storage for groceries and medicines, and its customers include Gap, Uniqlo and Carrefour. It raised $335 million in 2022, giving it a $2 billion valuation in a round led by Goldman Sachs. Helsing Country Germany Founders Torsten Reil, Niklas Köhler and Gundbert Scherf Year Founded 2021 Business AI Defense Europe's most valuable defense-tech startup began by building artificial intelligence software for drones and fighter jets. Now it's making weapons of its own, developing an attack drone, called HX-2, that can carry ammunition and navigate autonomously. In February the company announced plans to deliver 6,000 of these AI-enabled drones to Ukraine. With close ties to the German military, the Munich-based company is well positioned to benefit from a European defense spending spree as the US reduces military aid. The company was last valued at €5 billion ($5.6 billion), after raising €450 million in a venture capital funding round led by General Catalyst in July. Isar Aerospace Country Germany Founders Daniel Metzler, Josef Fleischmann and Markus Brandl Year Founded 2018 Business Europe's Answer to SpaceX Just as European consumers are turning away from Elon Musk's Tesla, the European Union dreams of a day when it won't be dependent on the tycoon's SpaceX. Enter Isar Aerospace, the German rocket startup that's seeking to break Europe's reliance on the US for private satellite launches. In March it held the first liftoff of an orbital rocket from continental Europe outside of Russia. Some 30 seconds later, the rocket crashed. Even so, the launch was hailed as a success, and Isar is moving full steam ahead. Last year, it raised €220 million in a funding round that included a commitment from the NATO Innovation Fund. Lovable Country Sweden Founders Anton Osika and Fabian Hedin Year Founded 2023 Business Vibe Coding Remember when coding academies were all the rage? How quaint. Thanks to companies like Lovable, we now know that basic coding is one of the things that AI excels at. Lovable is near the head of the pack when it comes to vibe coding, which helps users with no programming experience build apps and websites. Its platform operates on a chat-based interface that lets you give commands in plain English. While AI isn't going to replace enterprise-grade software overnight, it's already disrupting the startup scene. Lovable co-founder Anton Osika says half of his users are entrepreneurs building their own companies. In February, Lovable raised $15 million in a round with backing from Meta board member Charlie Songhurst. Mistral AI Country France Founders Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample and Timothée Lacroix Year Founded 2023 Business Europe's AI Answer It's the only European company that can credibly claim to be in the conversation with the US and Chinese heavyweights when it comes to large language models. Mistral's open-source models have a less-is-more approach: They use fewer parameters than ones made by OpenAI and Anthropic in a bid to be faster and more energy efficient. Last year Mistral raised €600 million at a €5.8 billion valuation, establishing it as one of Europe's most valuable startups and the continent's best hope for an AI champion. However, that pales in comparison to the sums that US rivals have brought in, and Mistral has begun adding closed-source models, tailored for businesses, in a bid to get more commercial traction. Monumental Country The Netherlands Founders Salar al Khafaji and Sebastiaan Visser Year Founded 2021 Business Another Brick in the Wall While 3D-printed houses are all the rage, the Dutch startup Monumental wants to revolutionize the building industry brick by brick. It has designed brick-laying robots that are small and agile enough to fit anywhere a human can. That means they don't rely on greenfield developments and can build affordable, scalable construction projects in cities, where new buildings are needed most. After starting with a 15-meter facade for an office and warehouse in 2023, its robots have worked on several projects, including social housing. Monumental raised $25 million last year to roll out more AI-powered robots across Europe and train them to use more varied construction materials. Neko Health Country Sweden Founders Hjalmar Nilsonne and Daniel Ek Year Founded 2018 Business Body Scanners At Neko, co-founded by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, body-scanning technology is at the forefront of a movement seeking to revolutionize medicine by shifting the focus from treatment to monitoring and early interventions. Its array of sensors uses AI-powered analysis to check for skin conditions, cardiovascular troubles and other issues in less than an hour. For now, the scans are available at clinics in Stockholm and London and cost up to £299 ($397)a pop. Some experts worry that scanning healthy people could lead to overdiagnosis or unnecessary treatments. While Neko's effectiveness hasn't been confirmed by peer-reviewed studies yet, its spa-like approach to health care has led to long waiting lists and a $1.8 billion valuation. Nothing Country UK Founders Carl Pei Year Founded 2020 Business Affordable, Funky Phone You can tell a Nothing phone from any other on the market by the LED lights on the back, which provide visual cues for notifications and calls. While some might call the feature a gimmick, the UK-based phone manufacturer has managed to produce midrange phones with enviable cameras for £400 to £700 as well as earbuds and accessories. The London-based company's founder, Carl Pei, previously co-founded Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus. Nothing is backed by investors including Highland Europe, EQT Ventures, Google Ventures and iPhone co-inventor Tony Fadell. Ochre Bio Country UK Founders Quin Wills and Jack O'Meara Year Founded 2019 Business Curing Liver Disease with Data Ochre Bio is one of several new companies using the latest artificial intelligence technology to develop drugs more quickly. But the Oxford-based startup is focused squarely on chronic liver disease, testing RNA therapies for the deadly illness with limited treatments. Ochre Bio signed a deal worth up to $1 billion with drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim last year, followed by a licensing partnership with GSK. The startup has opened labs in New York and Taipei, but it's competing in AI drug development with larger biotech firms and newcomers such as Isomorphic Labs, the spinoff from Google DeepMind. In 2024, Ochre Bio's co-founder Jack O'Meara stepped down as CEO, replaced in the interim by its executive chair, the veteran pharmaceutical executive Eliot Forster. Orbital Materials Country UK Founders Jonathan Godwin, Daniel Miodovnik and James Gin-Pollock Year Founded 2022 Business AI for Advanced Materials Orbital Materials' AI helps uncover novel, advanced materials. The program can design a new material from scratch after it's prompted with desired properties, using a proprietary dataset. The company has recently focused its attention on improving the efficiency of data centers. These server farms are essential for the development of AI, but are extremely power hungry and generate a lot of waste heat. Finding materials to cool them more effectively and capture carbon can allow the field of AI, and Orbital Materials' business, to advance more quickly. The British company has a partnership with Amazon Web Services and is backed by Nvidia's venture arm. It's all about AI helping AI. Pennylane Country France Founders Tancrède Besnard, Felix Blossier, Thierry Deo, Edouard Mascré, Quentin de Metz, Alexandre Roquoplo and Arthur Waller Year Founded 2020 Business Accounting Platform Bookkeeping can be an administrative headache for companies and their accountants. Pennylane's dashboard combines accounting, invoicing, expenses management and banking. The system plugs into third-party services to import bank statements or billing information and will transcribe photographs of printed receipts. The French company raised €75 million this year in a round led by Sequioa Capital at a $2.2 billion valuation, which it plans to use to expand across Europe as businesses increasingly adopt electronic invoicing. The company has 4,500 accounting firms and 350,000 small and medium-size enterprises as customers in France and will begin its expansion this year, starting in Germany. Pigment Country France Founders Eléonore Crespo and Romain Niccoli Year Founded 2019 Business Excel with Élan Pigment sells its AI-powered planning and business forecasting platform following a strategy that's helped propel enterprise software companies to greatness for the past decade — subscriptions. It's a winning approach so far: The company doubled its annual recurring revenue in the last year and its services are used by clients including Coca-Cola, Unilever and ServiceNow. In 2024, Pigment was crowned a unicorn after a $145 million funding round that included money from former Meta Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. Poolside Country France/US Founders Jason Warner and Eiso Kant Year Founded 2023 Business AI Coding If you were to ask an AI chatbot to create the ideal elevator pitch for a venture capitalist, the result just might sound like Poolside: a company that builds AI to generate code all on its own. The startup was founded in 2023 in the US by Jason Warner, who oversaw the Copilot tool for Microsoft's GitHub, and software entrepreneur Eiso Kant. However, following early investments from state-owned investment firm Bpifrance and multiple French billionaires, it's now based in both Paris and San Francisco. Late last year the startup, which has shared few details, raised $500 million to further its goal of working towards artificial general intelligence. Quantexa Country UK Founders Vishal Marria Year Founded 2016 Business Breaking Down Data Silos Quantexa's AI-driven data-crunching software helps companies interpret information from all over their organization. The tech, which it calls 'decision intelligence,' can help generate insights about how a company's units are performing, detect potential fraud or money laundering and gather insights about customer needs. The company raised $175 million in March, hitting a $2.6 billion valuation. It said it plans to use the fresh investment to explore deals and expand its business serving government agencies — it's also planning more tools for US banks. A good chunk of its customers are financial institutions, including ING, HSBC and Standard Chartered. Quantum Systems Country Germany Founders Florian Seibel, Michael Kriegel, Tobias Kloss and Armin Busse Year Founded 2015 Business All-Seeing Drones Investors are clamoring for defense deals in Europe as the war in Ukraine drags on. Quantum Systems makes drones for surveillance and reconnaissance in the battlefield. Based in Munich and backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, the startup has been a regular supplier of equipment to Ukraine. In May it became the latest European unicorn, raising €160 million from venture capital firms, German defense firm Hensoldt and others. Thiel also invested again. Synthesia Country UK Founders Victor Riparbelli, Steffen Tjerrild, Lourdes Agapito and Matthias Niessner Year Founded 2016 Business Video Avatars That actor in the compliance video you just watched might actually be an avatar, if Synthesia had anything to do with it. The London startup can create lifelike clips from text prompts in more than 140 languages. It sells its services to businesses looking to produce cheap training videos and localize marketing content. Powerful tools like this have raised concerns about deepfakes, leading Synthesia to place some restrictions on individual users. That hasn't deterred investors. Synthesia raised $180 million at a $2.1 billion valuation this year, in spite of increasing competition from OpenAI, Google and Meta. The Exploration Company Country Germany Founders Hélène Huby Year Founded 2021 Business Reusable Spacecraft Backed by the French and German governments, the Exploration Co. is leading European efforts to build a reusable space cargo ship to rival Elon Musk's Dragon. Unlike the Dragon capsule, which is designed for launch by SpaceX rockets, Exploration's Nyx is designed to be 'launcher agnostic,' meaning it can hitch a ride with a variety of rockets from different countries. The company raised $160 million in November and said it will launch a Nyx prototype this year in what it calls Mission Possible. Eventually it could shuttle cargo to the International Space Station and to the new generation of commercial space stations being developed by private companies. Tripledot Studios Country UK Founders Lior Shiff, Akin Babayigit and Eyal Chameides Year Founded 2017 Business One Hundred Games of Solitaire Ever play Solitaire on your phone? Then there's a good chance you've used one of Tripledot Studios' apps. The mobile gaming company, formed by three friends in London in 2017, gained a reputation for well-designed (not to mention addictive) card and puzzle games. Within five years it raised $116 million at a $1.4 billion valuation. That was just the start. In May, Tripledot agreed to buy the gaming units from ad-tech company AppLovin for $400 million and a 20% stake in Tripledot. With the deal, Tripledot will operate 12 gaming studios across 23 cities and rake in nearly $2 billion in revenue a year. Wayve Country UK Founders Alex Kendall and Amar Shah Year Founded 2017 Business Self-Driving-ish Cars Formed in 2017, Wayve takes a different approach to self-driving cars than Silicon Valley and Detroit. Rather than building robot cars, Wayve makes software to give vehicles autonomous and driver-assistance features. In 2024 it raised more than $1 billion from SoftBank, Nvidia and others, the largest amount for a European AI startup. Microsoft is also an investor — Wayve once took Bill Gates for a self-driving spin around London. The company has signed a deal with Nissan to add driver-assistance capabilities to the carmaker's fleet. Wayve has promised a commercial debut 'in the near term.' Methodology To kick off our startups list, the teams at Bloomberg and Founders Forum reached out to a group of leaders and investors in the global startup ecosystem. These judges donated their time and expertise to nominate a long list of startups that eventually became our 25. All nominations met the following criteria: Technology focused, but sector agnostic Less than 10 years old Strong ties to Europe via headquarters and/or founders Minimum current valuation of $50 million Impressive growth Innovation that gives them the potential to be industry leaders Founders Forum then ranked the nominations with its proprietary scoring algorithm, and the Bloomberg News tech team whittled down the best-scoring 100 to get our top 25. We'd like to thank our judges: Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam, senior executive editor for finance and legal at Bloomberg Ed Bussey, CEO of Oxford Science Enterprises Vittorio Colao, vice chairman of EMEA at General Atlantic Lynn Doan, managing editor for Tech in EMEA and US East Coast at Bloomberg Peter Elstrom, executive editor for tech in EMEA and Asia at Bloomberg Dean Forbes, CEO of Forterro Tom Giles, senior executive editor for Global Tech at Bloomberg Matthew Grimes, co-director of the Entrepreneurship Centre at Cambridge Judge Business School Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and investor at Greylock Luciana Lixandru, partner at Sequoia Tom MacKenzie, anchor of Bloomberg Daybreak Sonali De Rycker, partner at Accel Kate Ryder, CEO of Maven Cristina Stenbeck, chairperson of Kinnevik Founders Forum Group Executive Chair Brent Hoberman and CEO Carolyn Dawson and Atomico and Skype founder Niklas Zennström provided additional guidance to the list. Amy Thomson, Olivia Solon, Yazhou Sun, Jake Rudnitsky and Mark Bergen were the Bloomberg News team who put the list together. More On Bloomberg
