# Sifted data

Italian startups are growing up: bigger early-stage rounds and more late-stage money, data shows

Bigger seeds, a rebound in growth rounds and a record year for late-stage equity point to a maturing pipeline

The investors with the biggest jumps in the Sifted AI 100

Balderton, Singular, EQT and LocalGlobe each added five companies to their Sifted AI 100 tally this year. Here's who is getting into Europe's best AI deals, and who is slipping.

Europe’s fastest-growing fintechs are queueing up for growth-stage funding rounds

Twelve of the 22 startups on the Sifted 250 planning a Series B or C by Q3 2027 are fintechs, with eight based in the UK

The breakout European startups tripling revenue every year

Six of the seven are new to the Sifted 250, three come from Central and Eastern Europe and most run with teams of fewer than 50 people

The most capital-efficient startups in Europe

These nine startups made more revenue in a year than capital raised since they were founded

The top 10 investors backing Europe’s fastest-growing startups and scaleups

A look at the most active investors backing the startups on Sifted’s 2026 leaderboard of the 250 fastest-growing startups in Europe, based on the number of companies they backed

8 pre-seed rounds led by Tier 1 US investors in AI-native companies

Silicon Valley’s biggest venture firms are increasingly hunting for European AI startups before they’ve barely got off the ground

Europe’s leading pre-seed investors in 2026

From London to Helsinki: the VC funds consistently backing Europe's earliest-stage startups

The companies that shot up Sifted’s DACH & CEE leaderboard

Despite their size, Berlin-based unicorns N8n and Parloa are among the biggest climbers 

Just three deals make up almost half of all VC funding in Germany this year

More than a third of all German VC funding since Sifted started tracking in 2024 has gone to just 10 companies

The 10 robotics startups that raised the biggest rounds in H1 2026

Robotics startups in Europe raised more in H1 2026 than the previous two years combined. Here are the big hitters

Record number of CVCs making repeat bets on European robotics

Chipmakers and AI infrastructure players are leading the activity, according to Sifted data

Europe’s 30 most active public funds in H1 2026

The EIC leads public funding efforts, but country-specific funds are increasingly active

The 144 new funds this year and what they reveal about Europe's investment market

Europe's fund managers are raising again. Just not the ones you'd expect.

European robotics startups raised more in six months than past two years combined

Neura Robotics's €1.2bn raise gives continent biggest ever half for robotics funding

Go big and go abroad: Europe’s startups are expanding internationally as early as seed

13 early-stage deeptech startups Tier 1 VCs backed in H1 2026

Some of the continent’s most active investors backed companies tackling problems once considered too complicated

AI, dual use and spacetech: the new stars of debt funding

The sectors with the most momentum heading into H2

Sifted dug into the data to discover the hottest sectors across Europe in the first half of 2026

European rounds are getting bigger, but fewer companies are closing them

Every median value for every round has increased for each of the past three comparable years, but dealcount's down for many rounds.

Europe’s leading tech hubs by deal activity in H1 2026

Capital and specialisation are driving new (and smaller) European tech hubs

The sovereign capital, global chipmakers and serial investors behind Europe’s new unicorns 

Out of more than 300 investors, only 25 have invested in two or more new unicorn.

The 25 companies Europe’s startup insiders watched most closely in H1

Sifted Pro readership data reveals which European startups and scaleups investors, corporates and advisers were monitoring most actively in H1

One unicorn a week: Europe's new model for billion-dollar startups

Europe is minting unicorns again: younger, faster to $1bn and clustered around AI-native bets