Last month saw 409 VC investments across Europe, with $7.4 billion invested in total – a 409% increase in funding volume compared to August.
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, Health Care leads with 129 rounds, followed by AI with 110 and FinTech with 80, each ahead by a significant margin of the next industry, Energy (51).
Y Combinator and Bpifrance were the most active investors in September with 9 announced investments each. EIFO followed with 7, then HTGF and Seedcamp with 6 each, rounding out the top five most active investors.
Top 10 Industries of Financed Startups
- Health Care
- AI
- FinTech
- Energy
- BioTech
- Food and Beverage
- Manufacturing
- Marketing
- Web
- Retail
Top 5 Investors with the highest number of deals
- Y Combinator
- Bpifrance
- EIFO
- HTGF
- Seedcamp
Notable funding rounds across Europe
In September, the largest funding round was a $1.99 billion Series C by Mistral AI, a Paris-based AI platform providing large language models and AI services tailored to diverse enterprise applications. Founded in 2023 in Paris, Mistral AI raised the investment to further expand its solutions.
While Seed Rounds made up the largest share of rounds (41%), the highest investment volume was in Series C rounds, which accounted for $2.4 billion across 8 deals.
The largest Seed Round was secured by Paid, a London-based business engine for AI agents. Founded in 2024 in the UK, Paid raised $22 million (€19 million) in September.
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 September, London remained the leading hotspot for European VC by number of investments (75), followed by Paris (24), Amsterdam (13), Berlin (12) and Madrid (10).
The most investments by country were in the UK (110), followed by Germany (46) and France (45).
When ranked by investment volume instead of deal count, Paris ($2.33 billion across 24 deals) takes over the top 1, and Espoo ($325 million across 2 deal), Cambridge ($205 million across 8 deals), and Zurich ($176 million across 6 deals) join in the top five cities by volume.
VC Exit Overview
In September, 44 exits took place including an IPO for the first time since June.
With 12 exits, Health Care companies were the largest exit industrie, followed by FinTech (11) and AI (10) companies.
Most companies exited in the UK with 10 exits, followed by 8 companies in France.
- Number of Acquisition Exits
- Number of IPO Exits
PE Acquisitions Overview
In September, 31 PE acquisitions (7% of all VC and PE investment rounds) were conducted, a decrease of 5%-p compared to last month.
With 7 acquisitions, the UK saw the highest number of companies acquired in September.
Health Care (9), Manufacturing (6) and Consulting (5) were the top acquisition industries mentioned.
The standout deal was GTCR’s €4.8 billion acquisition of Zentiva, a globally active manufacturer of generic medicines with low-cost alternatives to branded medicines.
- % of all investment rounds
- Number of PE acquisitions
*All data from CrunchBase, as of October 6, 2025.
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