Dealroom CEO: Europe's venture-backed companies will overtake industry within five years

Dealroom founder and CEO Yoram Wijngaarde said at the Wave by Vento conference in Turin that European venture-backed companies could be worth more than the continent's industrial base within the next five years. He also said that the first European startup worth a trillion dollars may already exist. The talk took place on Thursday, October 8, 2026. The available excerpt does not say which company he had in mind.

What exactly was said

According to Wijngaarde, the venture-funded ecosystem will overtake Europe's industrial sector in total value created within five years. Dealroom collects data on startups, funding rounds and valuations, so its chief speaks as someone who sees the market in numbers. But this is a forecast, not a report. The excerpt includes no published calculations.

The second claim is more provocative. A trillion dollars remains a threshold that only a handful of the world's technology corporations hold, most of them US public companies. The suggestion that a European startup may already be approaching that trajectory looks bold. It looks bolder still because the company is not named.

Key points

• Who is speaking: Yoram Wijngaarde, founder and CEO of Dealroom.
• Where and when: Wave by Vento, Turin, Thursday, October 8, 2026.
• Main claim: Europe's VC-backed companies will overtake its industrial base in total value.
• Horizon: within five years.
• Second claim: the first European trillion-dollar startup may already exist.
• Not disclosed in the excerpt: the company's name, the calculation methodology, and specific figures for either side of the comparison.

Why the comparison with industry matters, and where it is weak

For decades, Europe's economy has rested on automotive, machinery, chemicals and pharma. Against that backdrop, the continent's tech sector was seen as a junior partner to the American and Chinese ones. If the value of venture-backed companies is compared with that of industry, it points to a shift in economic structure, not a single headline deal.

The comparison comes with caveats. Valuations of private companies are derived from funding rounds and depend on investor sentiment, not on daily trading. The value of industrial giants is set by the market and can move differently. It is also unclear what "total value created" includes: only current valuations, IPO exits, or also already-listed companies that grew out of venture backing. Without that definition, the figure is hard to verify.

Where AI comes in

The available excerpt does not mention AI. But it is reasonable to assume that optimism about trillion-dollar valuations is tied to companies working with neural networks, compute and software platforms, since that is where most of the world's venture capital is now concentrated. This is our assumption, not the speaker's words.

How to read this forecast

For founders and investors, the signal is this: look for confirmation in data, not in bold statements. It is worth checking how Dealroom calculates "value created," what share comes from public companies and what share from private valuations, and how much they depend on upcoming funding rounds.

For corporations and government programs, the main question is different: will Europe have enough late-stage rounds, stock market liquidity and access to compute for companies to grow to the scale Wijngaarde describes? If the full TNW article or the talk in Turin adds the company's name and figures, the forecast can be assessed on its merits. For now, it is a strong claim with no disclosed evidence.