Last month saw 368 VC investments across Europe, with $9.8 billion invested in total – a 573% increase in funding volume compared to September last year.
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 182 investments, followed by Health Care with 152 and FinTech with 84, each ahead of the next industry, BioTech (39).
BII Venture Lab was the most active investors with 15 investments. Followed by Y Combinator (9), Bpifrance (7), Mercia Ventures and HTGF with 6 investments each rounding out the top five most active investors.
Top 10 Industries of Financed Startups
- AI
- Health Care
- FinTech
- BioTech
- Manufacturing
- Energy
- Marketing
- Food and Beverage
- Web
- Retail
Top 5 Investors with the highest number of deals
- BBI Venture Lab
- Y Combinator
- Bpifrance
- Mercia Ventures
- HTGF
Notable funding rounds across Europe
In September, the largest funding round was a $3.49 billion Series D by Mistral AI, a Prais-based Venture which develops artificial intelligence models, applications, and infrastructure for organizations and developers. Founded in 2023 in France, Mistral AI raised the investment mainly to massively expand frontier research and training compute and to scale its full-stack sovereign AI offering.
Seed Rounds made up the largest share of rounds (39%). Despite that, the largest volume of $4.07bn was invested in 2 Series D Rounds.
The largest Seed Round was secured by Aptadir Therapeutics, a Milan-based company developing a treatment for Myelodysplastic Neoplasms based on the capability of specific RNA therapeutics. Founded in 2024 in Italy, Aptadir Therapeutics raised $45.5 million (€40 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 (56), followed by Paris (27), Berlin (14), Copenhagen (13) and Zurich (10).
The most investments were conducted in the UK (99), followed by France (46) and Germany (43).
When ranked by investment volume rather than the number of investments, Paris takes the top 1 spot ($3.91bn) with 27 investments and Amsterdam ($614mn) with nine investments, Lisbon ($580mn) with one investment and Munich ($474mn) with seven investments join London and Paris in the top 5 cities.
VC Exit Overview
This month, 37 exits without an IPO took place.
With 10 exits, AI companies represent the largest exit industry of the month, followed by EdTech (8) and Web (5) companies.
Most exited companies are based in France with 10 exits, followed by the UK with 6 exits.
- Number of Acquisition Exits
- Number of IPO Exits
PE Acquisitions Overview
In September, 46 PE acquisitions (11% of all VC and PE investment rounds) were conducted, a decrease of 2pp compared to last month.
With 14 acquisitions, the UK saw the highest number of companies acquired in September.
Manufacturing (8), Health Care (8) and FinTech (7) were the top acquisition industries mentioned.
The standout deal was Veritas Capital’s £~1.9 billion acquisition of Bodycote, a company which provides thermal processing and metallurgical services that modify the properties of metals and alloys.
- % of all investment rounds
- Number of PE acquisitions
*All data from CrunchBase, as of October 1, 2026.
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