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European Venture Capital Landscape – March 2026

With 360 investments and $8.2 billion raised across Europe, March saw a 86% increase in volume and 6% rise in deal count month over month. The largest round of the month was a $2.0 billion Series C by the London-based company Nscale, which builds AI data centers and provides GPU cloud infrastructure that companies use to train, run, and scale large AI models.

09.04.2026

Overview of the March 2026 European Venture Capital Landscape

Last month saw 360 VC investments across Europe, with $8.2 billion invested in total – a 86% increase in funding volume compared to February.

Number and volume of announced funding rounds over the past 12 months*

  • Number of funding rounds
  • Invested volume in $bn
Leading Industries and Investors

According to the number of conducted investments, AI leads with 127 investments, followed by Health Care with 87 and FinTech with 72, each ahead by a significant margin of the next industry, Energy (42).

Kima Ventures was the most active investor in March with 8 announced investments. Followed by Bpifrance, Octopus Ventures, LocalGlobe and Daphni with 6 investments each rounding out the top five most active investors.

Top 10 Industries of Financed Startups

  • AI
  • Health Care
  • FinTech
  • Energy
  • Manufacturing
  • BioTech
  • Food and Beverage
  • Retail
  • Web
  • Marketing

Top 5 Investors with the highest number of deals

  • Kima Ventures
  • Bpifrance
  • Octopus Ventures
  • LocalGlobe
  • Daphni
Notable funding rounds across Europe

In March, the largest funding round was a $2.0 billion Series C by Nscale, a London-based builder for AI data centers and provider for GPU cloud infrastructure that companies use to train, run, and scale large AI models. Founded in 2024 in the UK, Nscale raised the investment mainly to further accelerate their global development of vertically integrated AI infrastructure.

While Seed Rounds made up the largest share of rounds (43%), the highest investment volume was in Series C Rounds, which accounted for $2.66 billion across 8 deals.

The largest Seed Round was secured by Advanced Machine Intelligence, a Paris-based company which develops artificial intelligence systems that model real-world environments using sensor data. Founded in 2026 in France, AMI raised $1.03 billion (€892 million) in March.

Number and total volume of financing rounds per stage

  • Number of funding rounds per stage
  • Volume of financing rounds per stage in $mn

Detailed overview by stage

European VC Industry Hotspots

In March, London remained the leading hotspot for European VC by number of investments (64), followed by Paris (29), Berlin (15), Stockholm (11) and Barcelona (11).

The most investments by country were in the UK (96), followed by Germany (52) and France (44).

When ranked by investment volume rather than the number of investments, Lausanne ($237mn) with 4 investments joins London, Berlin, Stockholm and Paris in the top 5 cities.

VC Exit Overview

In March, 35 exits took place but contrary to last month, there was no IPO.

With 21 exits, FinTech companies were the largest exit industrie, followed by Health Care (7) and AI (7) companies.

Most companies exited in the United Kingdom with 15 exits, followed by 4 companies in France.

  • Number of Acquisition Exits
  • Number of IPO Exits
PE Acquisitions Overview

In March, 41 PE acquisitions (10% of all VC and PE investment rounds) were conducted, an increase of 2pp compared to last month.

With 10 acquisitions, the UK saw the highest number of companies acquired in February.

Manufacturing (9), FinTech (9), ProTech (7), Health Care (6) and Scurity (3)  were the top acquisition industries mentioned.

The standout deal was Brookfield’s €~1.2 billion acquisition of Fidere, a real estate company which focuses on acquisition& management of residential properties for rent.

  • % of all investment rounds
  • Number of PE acquisitions

*All data from CrunchBase, as of April 2, 2026.

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