Europe Can Build Unicorns. It Cannot Yet Build Giants.

Europe has 733 unicorns and four companies worth more than $100 billion. The United States has 2,409 unicorns, 29 companies above $100 billion and seven worth more than $1 trillion. Europe has none in that last group.

Quick Answer: Europe's problem is not company building. Dealroom data shows that European startups which raise the same amount of capital as American ones reach a $1B valuation at almost the same rate. The gap opens at the scaleup stage, where European companies raise roughly a fifth of what US companies raise each year, and where most of the money that does arrive comes from outside Europe.

The usual explanation for this gap is cultural. Europeans are said to be more cautious, less ambitious, too comfortable. The data presented by Dealroom at recent European tech events points somewhere else.

01.The Equal Funding Test

The most striking chart in the Dealroom material compares the share of companies that reach a $1B valuation, grouped by how much capital they raised. It covers companies founded since 1990 in Europe and the US.

The two lines almost overlap. Among companies that raised more than $2B, 92% of American companies and 89% of European ones reached unicorn status. The pattern holds across the funding bands below that.

This removes one argument from the debate. Given the same amount of capital, European founders build valuable companies at nearly the same rate as their American peers. Whatever separates the two ecosystems, it is not what happens inside the companies.

Newer European cohorts are also building value faster than older ones. On Dealroom's figures, startups founded between 2015 and 2019 have reached a combined enterprise value of around $1 trillion, well ahead of earlier cohorts at the same age.

02.Where the Funnel Narrows

The difference appears when the companies are counted by how far they get.

• Startups ($100K+ raised): Europe 54,771. US 79,432.
• Breakouts ($15M+ raised): Europe 7,306 (13.3% of startups). US 21,838 (27.5%).
• Scaleups ($100M+ raised): Europe 1,233 (2.3%). US 5,115 (6.4%).
• Unicorns ($1B+ value): Europe 733 (1.3%). US 2,409 (3.0%).

Source: Dealroom, August 2026. Operating companies founded since 1990, by headquarters. Europe includes the UK and Switzerland.

Europe starts with a large base: two thirds as many funded startups as the US. It then loses companies at every step. A European startup is about half as likely as an American one to raise $15M, and about a third as likely to raise $100M.

Read together with the equal funding test, the conclusion is uncomfortable. European companies do not fail to become unicorns because they are weaker. They fail to become unicorns because fewer of them get funded to the size where unicorns are made.

03.The Size of the Gap

Annual venture investment shows where the shortfall sits.

• Early stage ($0 to $15M rounds): about $10B a year in Europe against $13B in the US.
• Breakout stage ($15M to $100M rounds): about $16B against $47B.
• Scaleup stage ($100M+ rounds): about $18B against $82B.

At the start, Europe is close to parity. At the scaleup stage, the US invests more than four times as much.

The origin of the money matters as much as the amount. Between 2020 and 2025, domestic investors provided 58% of early-stage capital for European companies, but only 23% of scaleup capital. US investors provided 39% of scaleup capital, more than any other source. Rounds that include at least one of 24 leading US funds rose from $1.6B in the first half of 2023 to $10B in the first half of 2026.

Europe funds the risky early years. Others increasingly fund the stage where most of the value is created.

04.The Export Model

When capital comes from abroad, companies often follow it. Dealroom counts 964 unicorns built by founders of European origin. 315 of them were started in the US, and another 92 started elsewhere and later moved there. In total, 42% were built in the United States.

This is the quiet cost of the scaleup gap. European universities, public research funding and early-stage investors carry the years of highest risk. The jobs, the tax base and the later stock market listing often end up somewhere else.

It also explains why Europe has no company worth $1 trillion. Giants are built over decades of patient, large-scale capital, usually with a deep home stock market at the end. Europe has the founders and an improving pipeline. It does not yet have the capital structure to hold on to them at scale.

05.What Would Change the Picture

The policy debate has converged on three connected areas, and Dealroom presents them as a cycle in which each depends on the others.

1. More long-term capital. Europe has large pools of pension and insurance savings, and little of that money reaches venture capital. Dealroom estimates that a 1% allocation by European pension funds and insurers would add about $8.8B a year to scaleup rounds, roughly 50% more than today. The money would need to be allocated by experienced investors on merit, not by political direction.
2. One capital market. Fragmented supervision, insolvency regimes and listing rules keep European capital markets national. The reports by Enrico Letta (2024) and Mario Draghi (2024), and the European Commission's Savings and Investments Union, all make the case for integration. Pension funds need that scale before they can invest at size.
3. Easier company building. Dealroom also shows a correlation between the cost of restructuring a workforce and the number of unicorns per capita, with the US, Sweden and Switzerland at one end and Italy and Spain at the other. Dealroom itself labels this a correlation, not causation, and labour protection reflects choices that societies make for good reasons. The trade-off still deserves an honest discussion rather than silence.

Two caveats are fair. Dealroom's research supports an argument for redirecting savings into venture capital, so its framing is not neutral. And more capital alone does not guarantee better outcomes: the 2021 and 2022 funding peak showed that money can also inflate valuations. The data makes a strong case for the direction, not for any single policy.

---

There are signs of movement. European venture funds are on track for record fundraising in 2026, and first-time exits are well above the levels of the past two years. Europe now counts 56 companies worth more than $10 billion.

The question is whether Europe will be the place where those companies grow up, or only the place where they are born. Equal funding produces equal results. The decision about where the next giant is built is, to a large extent, a decision about where Europe's savings go.