In the third quarter of 2023, Startup funding in Europe has improved. Of course, the investment has benefited mainly those that have closed advanced financing rounds, focused above all on growth. In total, European startups have obtained 15.4 billion euros in financing, 28% more than what they achieved in the previous quarter.
These calculations are based on a study of the sector carried out by Crunchbase, which has also highlighted that the capital invested in the period, in addition to mainly favoring companies in growth rounds, has been the lowest in companies that have organized rounds of growth. seed and initial capital from the third quarter of 2022.
Specifically, financing for advanced rounds has doubled from the second quarter to the third, reaching €10 billion. Above all, investors have poured money heavily into the energy sector, highlighted by rounds from Sweden’s H2 Green Steel, battery manufacturers Northvolt and Verkor, and battery storage startup Zenobe Energy.
In general, the most significant investments have been in startups based in the United Kingdom, Sweden, France and Germany. As for investments in seed capital, they remained at 1,300 million euros, a figure notably lower than that recorded last year to date, when it reached 2,000 million euros. It therefore represents a 30% year-on-year drop and a 25% drop from one quarter to the next.
For their part, companies that have already passed the seed phase and are in the early stages of growth had a total of 4.3 billion euros, with the largest amount of this money concentrated in the series A rounds.
On the positive side, European startups have managed to increase the proportion of investment capital received globally compared to last year. Its share of the total has reached 23%, while that of investments in North American startups has not grown and remains stable.
European companies dedicated to Artificial Intelligence received close to a fifth of the total funding of the sector, reaching 11% of the region’s total capital obtained during the last quarter.
