Technology and Innovation Community

Recent collab report by dealroom.co and Prosus on the State of AI in Europe (link to PDF below):

The State of AI in Europe - The Invisible Giant

Key Summary:

• The AI window is open. It won't stay open forever. AI is reshaping the global economy at a pace the world has never seen. The countries and companies that move now will define the next decade. Those that hesitate will spend it catching up. Europe is at that inflection point - right now.
• Europe has everything it needs to win. Except urgency and courage. World-class talent. A massive, AI-hungry user base. A record $21.8B invested in 2025, up 58% in a single year. The foundations are solid. But foundations don't win races - speed and courage does. And right now, Europe is not moving fast enough.
• We're building great companies and then handing them to the US. Europe matches the US at the starting line. But at breakout stage, US investors outspend Europe 3x. At late stage, it's 9x. Over half of the capital scaling Europe's best AI companies is foreign. We are incubating the future for others to own. That has to stop.
• The next wave of AI is vertical, applied, and European - if we claim it. General-purpose GenAI? The US won that round. But the next frontier - World Models - is wide open. Also 75% of European AI investment already targets high-value applications in health, energy, defence, and fintech. Europe's edge is clear: dominate in the applications layer - health, energy, defence, fintech - and uniquely positioned to lead in World Models. Two massive prizes. One window. The moment is now.
• Europe doesn't have an innovation problem or a talent problem. It has a capital problem and a friction problem - and both are fixable. European pension funds sit on €13 trillion, raising their ventures allocation to 3% unlocks €100 billion overnight. Streamline the regulatory stack, scale up EU-Inc into a real tech highway, and Europe's AI pipeline doesn't incrementally improve - it explodes.

- Todor