Deep tech stands out as one of the most resilient sectors in the European innovation ecosystem(s) at the moment.
That was already one of the main findings in Atomico's annual and just-released 'State of European Tech' report, but the organisations behind the third annual report specific to European Deep Tech - Dealroom, Lakestar and Walden Catalyst Ventures - have put some fresh numbers on it.
European deep tech as a category saw approximately $15 billion raised in 2023 to date (nearly on the same level as a year before), in stark contrast to e.g. the -70% decline observed in the European fintech sector.
According to the report, European deep tech investment will close at -7% in 2023 vs. 2022 (compared to -46% for 'regular' tech).
European 'Novel AI' investment, meanwhile, is expected to grow +50% year-on-year (to $1.3 billion).
Even on the regional level, the EU-27 deep tech market showed the highest resilience compared to other regions with 6% growth in the last 12 months (while in the other regions, there is a recorded decline in investments).
The data from the report also shows that, between 2018 and 2023, there has been a significant increase in the establishment of deep tech hubs around Europe.
London attracted $12.8 billion, Stockholm secured $10.3 billion, Paris accumulated $7.7 billion, Munich obtained $4.9 billion, and Oxford & Cambridge jointly garnered $9 billion. Also coming up: Grenoble.
The report also didn't shy away from identifying some potential obstacles for further growth:
"Some of the biggest challenges that remain in Europe are to encourage more entrepreneurs to move into Deep Tech, to harmonise university spinout terms, to form more dense talent / excellence clusters, to increase the LP base and involvement of institutional investors, to stress the importance of governments & corporations as customers, to strengthen the exit channels, and to promote diversity across founders & investors."
You can download the full 'European Deep Tech Report 2023' here.
To express your interest in joining the EIC Scaling Club and make Europe's deep tech sector even stronger, head on over here.
About the EIC Scaling Club
The EIC Scaling Club is a curated community where 100 European deep tech scale-ups with the potential to build world-class businesses and solve major global challenges come together with investors, corporate innovators and other industry stakeholders to spur growth.
The top 100 European deep tech companies will be carefully selected from a pool of high-growth scale-ups that have benefitted from EIC financial schemes, other European and national innovation programmes, and beyond.
The EIC Scaling Club is an EIC-funded initiative run in partnership by Tech Tour, Bpifrance (EuroQuity), Hello Tomorrow, Tech.eu (Webrazzi), EurA and IESE Business School.