Sebastian Siemiatkowski is CEO and co-founder of Swedish Fintech Kralna and gave a thumbs up at the company’s IPO on September 10, 2025 at the New York Stock Exchange in New York City, USA.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
London – It’s been a busy week for the European tech sector.
On Tuesday, London-based artificial intelligence startup ElevenLabs announced that it could sell its shares to $6.6 billion in the secondary round, which doubles its valuation.
Dutch chip company ASML then confirmed on Wednesday that it was leading the financing of French AI company Mistral’s 1.7 billion Euro Series C at a valuation of 11.7 billion euros ($13.7 billion) from last year’s 5.8 billion euros. Mistral is considered a competitor to things like Openai and humanity.
Swedish Fintech Company Klarna On Thursday, he made his debut on the New York Stock Exchange after the long-awaited first public offering. Klarna shares closed the day at $45.82, giving it a market value of over $17 billion.
These developments revived hope that Europe could develop a high-tech industry that could compete with the US and Asia. Over the past decade, investors have been discussing the possibilities of Europe for building valuable high-tech companies, rejecting the idea that Silicon Valley is the only place to create innovative new ventures.
However, the dream of the “golden age” of European technology never came to fruition.
The important curveball came in the form of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. This has soared inflation, which has resulted in global central banks increasing interest rates. Higher fees are considered bad for capital-intensive tech companies.
Ironically that same year, Klarna was valued at $45.6 billion in the SoftBank-led funding round, but its market value reduced to 85% to $6.7 billion.
Today, European venture capital investors see recent talk about high-tech companies in the region as a “growth wave” with less renaissance.
“This started 25 years ago when we saw the first signs of the European high-tech ecosystem, inspired by the original dot-com boom, which was a very Silicon Valley event,” Barderton Capital partner Slangachandrathirake told CNBC.
Balderton supports many prominent European technology names, including Fintech’s company Revolut and self-driving car high-tech developer Wayve.
“There was a temporary setback. The high-tech lamp after the 2008 financial crisis, Covid, but the ecosystem bounced back more strongly each time,” Chandrathirake said.
“Now, the confluence of huge new technology opportunities in the form of generative AI and communities that have done it before and have access to the capital they need are, of course, creating a huge number of companies that define a sector,” he added.
Europe vs. USA
Investors supporting tech startups on the continent say there is something that needs to be made, especially amidst the economic uncertainty caused by President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs.
One is that there are currently clear discounts on European technology. Last year, venture company Atomico’s annual state of technology in Europe reported that fixed the value of the European technology ecosystem at $3 trillion, predicting it would reach $8 trillion by 2034. Compare it to the American story.
“A decade ago, there weren’t a single European startup that exceeded $50 billion. Today there are a few European startups,” says Jan Hammer, who supports Revolut, and Revolut and Ald, among others. Adieentold CNBC.
“Now tens of thousands of people are directly experiencing the construction and expansion of global companies from companies like Revolut, Alan, Mistral and Adyen,” added Hammer. “It’s important to note that European startups are no longer expanding overseas, but are born globally from day one.”
Amy Nauikoas, founder and CEO of Fintech Investor Anthemis, suggested that investors may view Europe as a kind of safe haven market, amid growing geopolitical risks and macroeconomic uncertainty.
“This is certainly an investment opportunity,” Nauikoas told CNBC. “Macroeconomic dislocations always support early entrepreneurial disruptions and innovation.”
“This time, the trends in family rooms, changes in capital… and the general constipation of the US institutional allocation market suggest that there should be more money in the UK (and) European private market from global investors.”
The problem remains
Despite the bullish sentiment surrounding European technology, there remains a systematic challenge that makes it difficult for local tech companies to achieve the size of their US and Asian counterparts.
Startup investors have been seeking more allocations from pension funds to European venture capital funds for some time. And the European market is highly fragmented and regulations vary from country to country.
“There’s really nothing to prevent European tech companies from expanding and becoming huge,” Niklas Zenstrom said. The CEO and founding partner of early Klarna Investor Atomico told CNBC.
“But there are some conditions that make it difficult,” he added. “There’s no single market yet.”
Several high-tech entrepreneurs and investors support a new initiative called “EU Inc.” The purpose, which began last year, is to boost the technical sector of the European Union through the establishment of the “28th Regime.” This is a proposed pan-European legal framework to simplify complex regulations in various individual EU countries.
“Europe is in bad headspace for very obvious reasons at this point, but I don’t think many of the founders there really are,” Bede Moore, chief commercial officer of Antler, an early stage investment company, told CNBC.
“At best, all you can say is that there is this secondary tail wing. That means people feel that European needs are being galbanized… Please stand a little more independent.”
Watch: CNBC interviews Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski
