Venture funding in Europe in 2024 fell to $45 billion, says Atomico

Funding for European tech appears to have stabilised in 2024 after dropping precipitously in 2023, but the signs continue to point to more tough times ahead, according to the latest State of European Tech report. 

The annual survey — produced by European VC firm Atomico — notes that startups in the region are on track to raise $45 million this year. While far from the 50% drop of 2023, the figure is still down by $2 billion compared to a year ago. (Note: Atomico originally projected $45 billion for 2023; it then revised 2023 up to $47 billion.) 

Atomico has been producing these reports annually for the last decade so this latest edition makes a lot of noise about how much things have grown.

It’s undeniable that the tech ecosystem in Europe has blown up: Atomico says that there are now 35,000 tech companies in the region that could be classified as “early stage,” with a 3,400 late-stage companies and 358 valued at over $1 billion. Compare that to 2015, when there were a mere 7,800 early-stage startups, 450 late-stage startups and just 72 tech companies valued at over $1 billion. Yet there is a lot of sobering reading, too, about some of the challenges of the moment and signs of how geopolitical and economic unrest — despite that shiny stories about the boom in AI — continue to weigh down the market. 

Exits have fallen off a cliff. This is one of the more stark tables in the report that underscores some of the liquidity pressure that ultimately trickles down to earlier-stage tech companies. Put simply, M&A’s and IPO’s are relatively non-existent right now in European tech. 2024, at the time of the report being published in mid-November, saw just $3 billion in IPO value and $10 billion in M&A, according to S&P Capital figures. Both of these a big drops on the overall trend, which had otherwise seen steady rises in both, “consistently surpassing $50 billion per year threshold.” (Granted, sometimes all it takes is one big deal to make a year. In 2023, for example, ARM’s $65 billion IPO accounted for a full 92% of total IPO value, and clearly it didn’t have the knock-on effect many had hoped for in kick-starting more activity.) Transaction volumes, Atomico notes, are at their lowest points in a decade.

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