Dealroom CEO: Europe's first trillion-dollar startup may already exist

Europe's venture ecosystem could overtake traditional industry in total value creation within five years, said Jeroen Wijngarde, founder and CEO of Dealroom, speaking at the Wave by Vento conference in Turin. "The venture ecosystem will overtake industry in value creation within the next five years, if we play it right. And the first trillion-dollar venture company will be built. It might be a company that's still early-stage today. We need to think about the future, prepare for it, and create the conditions for it," Wijngarde said.

The scale and shape of venture Europe

Venture investment in Europe has reached $89 billion a year and keeps growing. Large funding rounds are keeping up the pace: Mistral raised €3 billion in September, while Helsing and Isomorphic Labs each pulled in substantial sums.

The region is now home to 56 venture-backed companies valued at more than $10 billion. The combined value of all European venture companies is $4.4 trillion — nearly a quarter of the European stock market's total capitalization. Exits this year already exceed all previous years combined. Milan-based Bending Spoons, for instance, raised $1.68 billion in its US listing in July.

According to Dealroom data, 54,771 European startups have raised at least $100,000, compared to 79,432 in the US. The gap widens at every stage:

• 1,233 European companies have raised $100 million or more; in the US, it's 5,115 • Four European companies are valued above $100 billion: Spotify, Arm, Booking.com, and Revolut • The US has seven companies worth more than $1 trillion; Europe has none • For rounds of $100 million or more, the gap is fourfold

However, given an equal amount of invested capital, European startups become unicorns at the same rate as American ones.

Where the capital goes

American investors — Sequoia, General Catalyst, and Accel — have nearly doubled their annual investment in Europe. The result: foreign investors now control most of the late-stage rounds of Europe's most successful startups, and the resulting profits flow abroad.

Europeans save a lot, but mostly through banks and real estate, not equities. Redirecting just 1% of European pension assets into venture capital would boost the funds available for scaling by 50%.

European pension funds and insurers hold €15 trillion in assets but have invested only €15.5 billion in VC over the past decade. Meanwhile, this year alone, $50 billion of European capital has flowed into bonds issued by American hyperscalers.

A similar pattern shows up in AI. The State of AI Report 2026 (Nathan Benaich, Air Street Capital) shows that four American hyperscalers plan $733 billion in capital expenditure this year. The EU, by contrast, has allocated €1 billion to AI gigafactories as part of a program targeting up to €10 billion in public funding and at least €20 billion in private funding. A data center located in Europe doesn't guarantee Europe control over the models running on it.

Structural barriers and possible fixes

Money alone isn't enough. Countries with high restructuring costs — Spain, Italy, France — produce fewer unicorns. In Denmark and the US, restructuring is cheap. 42% of the founders of European unicorns built their companies in the US.

Wijngarde is calling for a single European capital market — an idea also backed by Enrico Letta and Mario Draghi. He endorsed the EU Inc proposal, a new company structure that would operate across the entire union.

European governments spend €2 trillion a year on public procurement, but startups get only a tiny slice of it. The exception is defense: money is flowing to Helsing and Quantum Systems (the latter raised $1.2 billion in July). Similar funding, Wijngarde argues, is needed in space, energy, and computing.