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European Venture Capital Landscape – April 2024

April shows a 17% increase in invested VC volume and an AI company wins the largest Seed-Round of the month. Learn all about it in our in-depth analysis

24.05.2024

Invested VC volume increased by 17% in April compared to the previous month

Number and amounts of announced funding rounds over the past 6 months*

(1) All data from CrunchBase, as of May 7, 2024

Software startups lead with 75 investments. The AI trend persists, with 39 investments in AI startups, equal to the number of investments in IT startups.

  • During April, 389 financing rounds were announced.
  • The total amount invested in the announced financing rounds was $$3.2bn, a 17% decrease since last month.
  • Most investments were made in AI businesses, amounting to 39 investments.
Top 10 industries of financed startups according to the number of conducted investments

SFC Capital was the most active VC investor

Investors with the highest number of investments in April
Number and total volume of financing rounds per stage

The largest round of April was a Series A Round of  $214.8mn

In April, most investment rounds were Seed Rounds (~36%). Despite that, the largest volume of $933mn was invested in 102 Venture Rounds.

London is the European VC industry hotspot, while Paris takes the 2nd spot

  • The most investments in April were conducted in the UK (138), followed by France (49) and Germany (40).
  • When ranking by investment volume instead of the number of conducted investments, London and Paris maintain their top two positions, but Saint-Denis and Dublin move up to positions 3 and 4, respectively, surpassing Berlin.

In the spotlight

Largest Round: HysetCo raised €200mn ($214.8mn)

Company
Industry

Energy management

Founded in

2020, Saint-Denis (France)

One-Sentence-Pitch

HysetCo is a pioneering hydrogen mobility start-up that helps its clients shift to zero-emission transportation.

Financing round
Money raised

€200mn

Type of financing round

Series A

Investors

Largest Seed-Round: FlexAI raised $30mn

Company
Industry

AI

Founded in

2023, Paris

One-Sentence-Pitch

FlexAI delivers universal AI compute by rearchitecting compute infrastructure at a system level.

Financing round
Money raised

$30mn

Type of financing round

Seed-Round

Investors

Private equity acquisitions increased by 37%

The number of PE acquisitions increases compared to VC investments
  • In April, 37 PE acquisitions were conducted, representing a share of 9% of all investment rounds (VC + PE) in April (426). This is the highest share in the last 6 months.
  • With a total of 6 acquisitions, London saw the highest number of companies acquired during the month of April, followed by Amsterdam with 4.
Highlight of European PE acquisitions in April
Largest known acquisition  – $5.3bn

 

Aquirer

Thoma Bravo

(Chicago-based PE firm)

 

Acquiree

Darktrace

(AI cybersecurity solutions)

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