European startups raised $42 billion in the first half of 2026, up 50 percent from a year earlier and the strongest stretch for venture funding in four years.[1] The number matters less than what sits behind it: a change in ambition.
“Europe has the technology and talent to build global leaders,” says Jérôme Delahaye, a Managing Director covering disruptive technology in Jefferies’ Investment Banking team. “The challenge is giving those companies access to the capital they need to scale.”
Many of those companies will be in one room on October 13 and 14, when Jefferies convenes its European Disruptive Tech Conference in London. The event has tripled in size since its debut last year: 55 presenting companies and more than 200 investors.
Ahead of the conference, Jefferies Insights sat down with Jérôme Delahaye to discuss the themes shaping European technology investment.
What makes the conference distinctive is who is in that room. The leadership teams of Europe’s most emblematic disruptive technology companies are busy building — advancing their technology, winning contracts, delivering. Outside a funding round, they rarely have time to meet investors. Hearing directly from dozens of them over two days is access that does not otherwise exist.
The investor side is equally unusual. More than 200 of the leading venture capital and private equity funds, crossover investors and long-only managers from the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia will attend — a concentration of global capital that reflects the reach Jefferies brings to its clients.
“The conference brings investors face to face with ambitious companies across AI, quantum, defense, space, robotics, healthcare and energy,” says Delahaye. “Seeing those opportunities together gives a clearer picture of where Europe’s next generation of technology leaders can emerge.”
Sovereignty Is Driving a Race for Capital
Europe has historically depended on the U.S. across strategic sectors such as defense, space and digital infrastructure. American hyperscalers alone control roughly 70 percent of the European cloud market.[2]
“Reducing that dependence is now a priority for governments, investors and corporates,” says Delahaye. “Governments, and increasingly European corporates, are backing sovereignty with significant capital, and that is opening up a major commercial opportunity for European technology.”
The commitments are substantial. Several NATO allies have raised defense and security spending toward five percent of GDP. The EU’s ReArm Europe plan will mobilize €800 billion.[3] Brussels has also opened bids to construct AI “gigafactories” to build sovereign computing capacity.
But sovereignty is not a procurement exercise. “Sovereignty is not simply about replacing foreign suppliers with European ones,” Delahaye says. “It means building companies that can compete globally on performance, scale and price.” That ambition, in capital-intensive verticals like space and data centers, requires investment at a scale Europe has rarely seen.
Global Capital Meets European Ambition
Fragmentation has long constrained Europe’s fastest-growing companies. Twenty-seven national markets, each with distinct regulators, exchanges and investor bases, have limited the flow of capital across borders. The result has been thin late-stage funding, and a persistent temptation for European-founded companies to relocate to the U.S., where deeper investor pools support nine-figure rounds.
Those same companies now draw on the entire global capital base. U.S. venture and private equity funds, sovereign wealth funds and strategic investors lead a substantial share of later-stage rounds [4], and they are joined by European capital of comparable ambition, such as the Scaleup Europe Fund, the Commission-backed vehicle managed by EQT. A decade ago, that investor base did not exist for European technology.
“Europe has no shortage of compelling technology companies,” says Delahaye. “The priority is connecting them with the global capital and investors that can support their next stage of growth.”
Valuations remain below U.S. levels, but they have never been higher. Europe’s unicorns are now collectively worth more than €800 billion, and the median Series E+ round has more than doubled over the past year.[5] Companies that move from launch to a valuation above $20 billion within a few years, once unheard of in Europe, are no longer anomalies.
Many European companies now scale substantially in private markets before weighing a public listing as the next logical step. Connecting them with the deepest pools of capital, in Europe and beyond, is precisely what the conference is built to do.
Can Regulation Match Europe’s Ambitions?
Europe’s regulatory environment has historically posed challenges for founders and investors alike. Delahaye sees signs of greater flexibility.
To address market fragmentation, the European Commission has proposed the 28th regime, a unified corporate structure spanning all 27 member states and intended to simplify cross-border investment. The EU is also taking a more measured approach to implementing technology regulation: compliance deadlines for “high-risk” AI systems under the AI Act have been extended to late 2027 and 2028, giving companies and investors more time to prepare.
“Europe should set high standards while giving its companies room to compete,” says Delahaye. “Getting that balance right will be critical to building globally competitive technology businesses.”
What to Watch: Quantum Computing
Delahaye sees quantum as the most underappreciated opportunity among the conference’s sectors.
“Quantum is still at an early stage, but the choices companies and investors make now will shape who is ready when commercial applications scale,” he says. “The window to get ahead of it is now, before everyone is chasing quantum the way they are chasing AI today.”
The capital is already moving. European quantum startups raised a record €1.5 billion in 2025, up about 170 percent on the prior year.[6] In June, Oxford Quantum Circuits closed Europe’s largest private quantum round to date at €260 million, while Quobly, Quandela and Alice & Bob have each raised more than €100 million. All four will present in London, alongside C12 and two companies that listed on Nasdaq this year, IQM and Pasqal.
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For deeper insights into the European tech market, follow coverage of this year’s Jefferies European Disruptive Tech Conference, October 13–14 in London.
[1] https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/data-funding-ai-ma-up-europe-q2-2026/
[2] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2025/780413/ECTI_ATA(2025)780413_EN.pdf
[3] https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-defence-industry/white-paper-european-defence-readiness-2030_en
[4] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/economic-bulletin/focus/2026/html/ecb.ebbox202605_01~4453cc2a34.en.html
[5] https://pitchbook.com/news/reports/q2-2026-european-vc-valuations-report
[6] https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/record-venture-funding-signals-europes-growing-quantum-clout
