Analysis

May 25, 2023

One thing that didn't fall in 2022: Peter Thiel's investments in Europe

Funds associated with the PayPal and Palantir cofounder did more deals in Europe in 2022 than 2021.

Freya Pratty

2 min read

Venture deals are down in Europe but at least one person seems to still have an appetite for the continent’s tech companies: Paypal and Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel. 

Funds linked to Thiel did more deals in Europe in 2022 than the year before, according to data from Dealroom — bucking the broader downtick in investment. 

Thiel is a partner at four US-based VC firms: Thiel Capital, Valar Ventures, Founders Fund and Mithril Capital. 

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Across them, deal count in Europe rose 16% between 2021 and 2022. Outside of Europe, the four Thiel-backed funds did 33% fewer deals last year than the year before.

In general, American funds did 2% fewer deals in Europe in 2022 than the year before. Deal count in general in Europe fell 13% year-on-year.

Thiel's European investments bucked the trend in 2022; but the four Thiel-backed funds’ deal count in Europe so far this year is meagre. There’s only been one Thiel-linked investment in 2023 — Valar Ventures’ Series A investment in Berlin-based fintech Mondu. 

And European deals still count for a relatively small percentage of the funds’ deals. Since they started investing, the funds have together made 110 deals in Europe — including companies like Spotify and N26 — compared to 826 deals in North America. 

Thiel’s not always been a Europhile. Back in 2018, he said he thought there were “no successful tech companies in Europe” — and two years before that he called the continent a “slacker with low expectations”.

Freya Pratty

Freya Pratty is a senior reporter at Sifted. She covers climate tech, writes our weekly Climate Tech newsletter and works on investigations. Follow her on X and LinkedIn