Europe’s Capital Reset: Where Tech Money is Moving Now
Europe’s tech investment story is no longer about recovery alone. According to PitchBook, AI captured 65% of total VC deal value in 2025, while CB Insights reported that AI companies accounted for 48% of total venture funding globally, confirming that capital is concentrating around a narrower set of high-conviction bets.
In Europe, that shift is becoming more sector-specific. State of European Tech 2025 findings show deeptech rising to 36% of European VC dollars, up sharply from 19% in 2021, a clear signal that investors are prioritising defensible infrastructure, industrial capability and scientific depth over broad software narratives.
What matters now is not just how much is being invested, but where conviction is building, and why.
Where capital is concentrating?
The headline numbers only tell part of the story. Beneath them, a more important shift is taking place, capital is becoming thematic, selective and increasingly tied to deployment. As SVB noted in its H1 2026 State of the Markets report, 2025 venture investment was heavily concentrated in mega-rounds, with $500M+ deals accounting for nearly half of total VC investment activity.
To understand how this cycle is shaping up, it helps to break it down into three layers, where capital is clustering, who is deploying it, and what kinds of companies are actually getting funded.
Sector Hotspots
AI infrastructure & chips: According to Reuters reporting on Axelera AI and Lace, investors are backing compute, inference and semiconductor tooling where scarcity and defensibility are strongest.
Autonomy & physical AI: Wayve and Oxa’s recent rounds show continued investor appetite for real-world autonomy across mobility, logistics and industrial environments.
Legal & regulated AI: Sifted’s reporting on Legora, alongside other recent AI workflow rounds, points to regulated professional services becoming one of Europe’s strongest AI categories.
Cybersecurity: Recent rounds such as Tracebit and Qevlar AI reflect growing demand for automated defence and SOC productivity.
Climate & energy: Photoncycle and Candela show continued conviction in energy resilience, storage and electrification.
Fintech infrastructure: Upvest and Silverflow reflect sustained investor interest in modernising financial rails and investment infrastructure.
Sovereign & spacetech: ech.eu’s coverage of PAVE Space suggests growing interest in strategic autonomy and space infrastructure.
Latest funding signals
Wayve: According to Wayve, its $1.2B Series D confirms continued conviction in autonomy and embodied AI, with Co-Founder & CEO Alex Kendall set to speak at GITEX AI EUROPE, bringing these developments directly to the stage.
Legora: As reported by Sifted, Legora’s $550M round highlights breakout momentum in legal AI.
Axelera AI: Reuters reported Axelera AI’s $250M raise, reinforcing Europe’s position in AI chip innovation.
Oxa: Oxa’s $103M Series D first close signals strong backing for industrial autonomy.
Granola: Sifted reported Granola’s $125M round, showing productivity AI still attracts capital when usage is strong.
Upvest: Upvest’s $125M financing round underlines continued investor appetite for fintech infrastructure.
Parallel: Index Ventures’ announcement of Parallel’s $20M round points to growing confidence in AI for healthcare operations.
Photoncycle: Sifted’s coverage of Photoncycle’s €15M Series A keeps climate resilience firmly on the funding radar.
Tracebit: Tracebit’s $20M Series A reflects sustained demand in cloud-native cybersecurity.
PAVE Space: Tech.eu’s report on PAVE Space’s $40M seed round suggests rising investor interest in orbital infrastructure.
High-signal investors shaping the market
According to recent deal activity, the most visible capital is coming from a mix of traditional VC, sovereign capital, pensions, corporate venture and public institutions. Accel has shown strong conviction in AI workflow leaders such as Legora and Basis, while Index Ventures is leaning into applied AI through rounds like Parallel and Granola. BlackRock’s participation in Axelera AI and Upvest signals that major asset managers are becoming more active in late-stage innovation financing.
At the same time, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan appeared in Wayve’s round, Temasek was among the backers of Rhoda AI, and NVentures featured in Oxa, showing that frontier tech is increasingly being funded by a wider and more strategic capital base.
Few of The Confirmed Investors at GITEX AI EUROPE
The shift in capital is not theoretical, it is already visible in the investors entering the ecosystem. Confirmed investors at GITEX Europe reflect the same market direction, more deeptech focus, more corporate venture participation and more international capital looking at Europe through a strategic lens:
Earlybird Venture Capital from Germany, participating in GITEX AI EUROPE, is a leading European venture capital firm backing early stage technology innovators from pre-seed through Series A.
Seventure Partners from France is a leading venture capital firm specializing in life sciences, digital health, and deep tech investments.
Ajinomoto Group from Japan is a global leader in food, amino acid science, and biotechnology.
Gekko Capital Partners from the UK, the corporate venture arm of GEKKO, focused on backing high-growth companies across technology, financial services, and business services.
Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) from Germany, is the corporate venture and innovation arm of the G+D Group, a global SecurityTech organization delivering trusted solutions in digital security, financial platforms, and currency technology across 40+ countries.
Fortino Capital from Belgium, is an investor focused on scaling innovative software and technology companies.
UVC Partners from Germany, is an early stage venture capital firm investing in European B2B tech startups across DeepTech, ClimateTech, Enterprise Software, Mobility, and AI.
Hitachi Ventures from Japan, is the corporate venture capital (CVC) arm of Hitachi, Ltd., dedicated to strategic investments in early and growth stage technology companies with relevance to Hitachi’s business innovation and global impact.
Capital sources & LP signals
Europe’s next growth cycle will not be funded by venture alone. According to the European Investment Bank, its expanded initiative is targeting around €15B in pledges over its lifetime with the aim of mobilising €80B in total investment, while the European Investment Fund’s ETCI 2.0 is opening further to private institutional investors.
At the same time, pension allocation remains relatively small. Reporting cited by Pension Policy International notes that European pension funds manage more than €3T in assets but allocate only around 0.12% to venture and growth capital, while S&P Global reported that European pension VC mandates rose to $485M in 2025, up 64% from 2024.
The signal is clear, Europe is building a more structured, longer-term capital stack, designed to support companies beyond early-stage hype into real scale.
What this means for the next 12–36 months?
The next cycle will reward companies closer to infrastructure, regulation and industrial application, not just software convenience. PitchBook, CB Insights and recent European funding rounds all point in the same direction, capital remains available, but it is concentrating around scarce layers, strong distribution and high-value enterprise use cases.
Deeptech is becoming Europe’s competitive edge, AI is still dominant but increasingly filtered through enterprise reality, and growth will depend more on real deployment than broad narrative. That does not suggest a weaker market, it suggests a more disciplined one.
Where this converges
The direction is clear, capital is concentrating, expectations are rising, and only a subset of companies are breaking through. What happens next depends on execution, access and relevance.
This is exactly the environment in which GITEX Europe becomes more valuable, bringing together 750+ startups and 600+ global investors in a market increasingly shaped by real deployment, real partnerships and real capital formation.
About
GITEX AI EUROPE, taking place 30 June – 1 July 2026 at Messe Berlin, is Europe’s largest gathering of AI, cybersecurity and deep tech innovators. The event connects startups, enterprises, investors and policymakers working together to accelerate Europe’s digital transformation and build the technologies shaping the continent’s future.