Healthtech showed signs of recovery in 2024 after a post-covid slump. European healthtechs raised $11.6bn in 2024, according to Sifted data — an increase on the $9.7bn recorded in comparable data by Dealroom in 2023.
While funding still sits much lower than $18.3bn picked up during the frothy days of 2021, 2024 saw some big raises for digital health startups in Europe and many of the world’s most valuable pharma companies also increased their dealmaking in the region.
So after a broadly positive 12 months for the sector — what do VCs think 2025 will have in store? Sifted spoke to investors from Calm/Storm Ventures, Giant Ventures and Ada Ventures to find out.
The rise of longevity and preventative healthcare
Lucanus Polagnoli, founder and managing partner at Calm/Storm Ventures
Europe has largely relied on accessible public healthcare systems in the past, resulting in low willingness to pay for out-of-pocket health services compared to the US. But 2025 will mark a turning point as a growing number of informed, independent health consumers embrace longevity and prevention-focused solutions.
We saw early signals of this shift in 2024: body scanning startup Neko Health, for example, launched in the UK and in the Nordics, and has a significant waiting list. Our portfolio company Aeon expanding in the DACH region with full-body health screenings also indicates rising demand for proactive healthcare. While insurers remain slow to reimburse such services at scale, out-of-pocket spending will drive this trend in the short term.
This shift is fueled by greater consumer willingness to pay for healthcare out-of-pocket, as individuals recognise the limitations of traditional healthcare systems and take health into their own hands. Longevity startups, prevention-focused platforms and advanced screening services will see substantial growth as Europeans prioritise wellness and proactive care.
For startups, 2025 represents a unique opportunity to cater to this emerging market of health-conscious consumers, transforming how Europeans approach long-term health management.
AI will continue to dominate healthcare innovation
Jia Lin Yong, investor at Giant Ventures
While single-use AI features will become increasingly commoditised (and may even face early pricing pressures), the rise in autonomous, context-aware AI agents will be transformative for both providers and patients.
For providers, we will start seeing AI agents that can manage end-to-end tasks, such as analysing medical data, diagnosing conditions and coordinating treatment plans — all while operating within complex healthcare ecosystems.
Unlike previous software solutions, which often increase clinicians’ administrative burden, AI agents that require limited input from clinicians will start becoming a meaningful solution to workforce shortages in health systems. From the perspective of patients, AI agents will make navigating health systems easier, more personalised and more transparent.
Our understanding of proteins will unlock drug discovery breakthroughs
Check Warner, partner at Ada Ventures
DeepMind’s protein structure prediction system AlphaFold has identified the structures of more than 200m proteins — bringing unprecedented insights into these critical building blocks of our biology. My prediction is that these breakthroughs will lead to a huge acceleration of research in the field of disease prevention and drug discovery.
Other startups are also predicting the strength of protein to protein binding and I expect there will be many more leveraging breakthroughs in our understanding of proteins to tackle persistent human health challenges and to accelerate drug discovery in 2025.
