EUVC E586 | EUVC Summit 2025 | Itxaso del Palacio, Notion Capital: Building European Cloud Challengers
At EUVC Summit 2025, one of the most anticipated sessions broke down a powerful data set: 100 of Europe’s breakout startups. This wasn’t theory—it was company-by-company insight, straight from interviews and bottom-up analysis.
Yes, there were rogue slides.
Yes, the crowd wanted to skip to the AI part.
And yes, it delivered.
~75% of these startups are based in Germany, France, and the UK.
Despite growing noise around new hubs, Europe’s big three remain dominant. It reflects ecosystem maturity—but also a challenge: how do we better back breakout teams in the Nordics, Baltics, Southern Europe, and CEE?
For the first time in years, Fintech dropped in sector rankings.
Instead, we saw a wave of AI-native sales and marketing tools—building products that help companies grow smarter, automate go-to-market, and personalize customer acquisition at scale.
“This year’s cohort is selling before building. AI is their leverage.”
One of the most notable shifts: a significant increase in solo-founder companies.
This reflects:
A rise in repeat operators
Greater early-stage tooling
More confidence in focused execution
It also implies VCs may need to shift their bias—many of these founders are no longer waiting for a co-founder to “complete” them.
The moment everyone waited for: AI-native insights.
49% of these 100 startups are AI-native at their core.
This means:
AI is not bolted on—it's the product itself
Many founders have already moved beyond horizontal LLMs to verticalized applications
They're monetizing via use-case depth, not just model architecture
Last year’s 100 had an average of 25 employees per company.
This year’s cohort? Just 14. That’s a 40% drop.
But don’t mistake that for weakness—roles are more specialized, and teams are more surgical. These aren’t MVPs—they’re hyper-focused execution machines.
“Today’s teams are smaller, sharper, and trained on efficiency from Day 1.”
Across hundreds of founder interviews, one theme stood out:
Tool loyalty is low.
Founders are switching infra, models, APIs, and tooling with no hesitation.
That’s not a sign of flakiness—it’s a sign of rapid evolution, where AI-native teams optimize continuously.
Controversially, the speaker closed with a contrarian take:
“I believe European AI regulation will actually accelerate enterprise adoption.”
Why?
Clarity breeds confidence
Corporate buyers need frameworks
Knowing what’s allowed = faster go/no-go decisions
In a twist, Europe might become the first-mover on enterprise AI—not in spite of regulation, but because of it.
Final Message:
“AI-native is not a trend. It's a new category of company. And Europe is building it—faster and leaner than ever before.”
Let’s keep watching the signals. Let’s keep fueling the flywheel.