Last month saw 397 VC investments across Europe, with $5.3 billion invested in total – a 28% decrease in funding volume compared to September.
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 111 rounds, followed by Health Care with 85 and FinTech with 56, each ahead by a significant margin of the next industry, BioTech (37).
Bpifrance was the most active investor in October with 10 announced investments. EIFO, HTGF, UniCredit and CDP Venture Capital followed with 7 investments each, rounding out the top five most active investors.
Top 10 Industries of Financed Startups
- AI
- Health Care
- FinTech
- BioTech
- Energy
- Manufacturing
- Web
- Marketing
- CleanTech
- Retail
Top 5 Investors with the highest number of deals
- Bpifrance
- CDP Venture Capital
- EIFO
- HTGF
- UniCredit
Notable funding rounds across Europe
In October, the largest funding round was a $433 million Series C by Nscale, a London-based company providing a full-stack AI cloud platform designed for enterprise-scale workloads. Founded in 2024 in the UK, Nscale raised the investment to to reinforce their commercial momentum.
While Seed Rounds made up the largest share of rounds (41%), the highest investment volume was in Series C rounds, which accounted for $1.66 billion across 10 deals.
The largest Seed Round was secured by Aerska, a Dublin-based biotechnology company. Founded in 2025 in Ireland, Aerska raised $21 million (€18 million) in October.
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 October, London remained the leading hotspot for European VC by number of investments (73), followed by Paris (26), Amsterdam (16), Barcelona (10) and Zurich (9).
The most investments by country were in the UK (113), followed by France (49) and Germany (34).
When ranked by investment volume rather than the number of investments, Munich ($422mn) with 7 investments, Milan ($392mn) with 8 investments and Stockholm ($383mn) with 8 investments join in the 5 cities.
VC Exit Overview
In October, 42 exits took place. Contrary to September, there was no IPO this month.
With 15 exits, AI companies were the largest exit industrie, followed by FinTech (12) and HR (6) companies.
Most companies exited in the UK with 13 exits, followed by 5 companies in France.
- Number of Acquisition Exits
- Number of IPO Exits
PE Acquisitions Overview
In October, 42 PE acquisitions (10% of all VC and PE investment rounds) were conducted, an increase of 3%-p compared to last month.
With 11 acquisitions, the UK saw the highest number of companies acquired in October.
Manufacturing (16), FinTech (9) and Health Care (5) were the top acquisition industries mentioned.
The standout deal was Cinven’s €2 billion acquisition of UAX, a private university offering education in healthcare, socioeconomics, and the sciences.
- % of all investment rounds
- Number of PE acquisitions
*All data from CrunchBase, as of November 5, 2025.
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