European Unicorns – Do They Have Legs?

There are now 40 companies in the prestigious list of Unicorns – billion-dollar valued tech companies – in Europe, according to “European Unicorns – Do They Have Legs?”, a new report released today by GP Bullhound, the international technology investment bank.

Europe now has 40 Unicorns, compared to 30 this time last year. This is put into context against the long term average of three Unicorns per year. The average valuation of these companies is now $3bn.

Manish Madhvani, Managing Partner at GP Bullhound comments: “Europe is proving that it is able to create category leaders such as Spotify and Farfetch on a consistent basis. The ecosystem and funding environment means that European leaders are for the first time able to rival their US counterparts in terms of attracting capital and talent.”

The UK has contributed significantly to this increase, with eight of the last ten new Unicorns coming from the region. Led by the likes of Funding Circle and TransferWise, this is largely due to the unprecedented growth of the FinTech sector, which now accounts for 31 per cent of Europe’s Unicorns.

Sweden is the country with the second highest number of tech Unicorns, followed by Russia and Germany. In the past twelve months, only the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands have contributed new additions to the list.

However, the report also reaffirms the continued superiority of US Unicorns over the European market. The total valuation of Europe’s 40 Unicorns is $120bn, which remains just over half of the valuation of Facebook alone ($230bn).

Manish Madhvani comments: “The next challenge for Europe is now taking these Unicorns to the next level. To truly compete on a global scale we need to examine how these Unicorns reach $10bn and $100bn valuations.”