European rich are all herding to move their money all of a sudden - where and why.

what does the first quarter data tells about the European early stage market

Successfully implementing an Information Security Management System (ISMS) according to the standard

Preparing for an independent audit of your ISMS to obtain ISO 27001 certification

Streamlining ISO 27001 certification with automation 

Two billion AI labs account for more than the seed dollar spent - Ineffable ($1.1B) and AMI Labs ($1.03B) are the obvious outliers which collectively took 57% of all Q1 European disclosed early stage capital. Both backed by US and EU tier ones and called seeds for preserving next round optionality.

Excluding these two, the rest of European early stage Q1 is $1.62B across 546 disclosed rounds - which makes for a rather conventional market.

24.6% of European pre-seed and seed rounds included American capital - those rounds absorbed 76.7% of all disclosed capital. Most of the US money went into AI infra & devtools, which as a category had a spend of $2.23B in for the quarter, or 59% of all European disclosed early stage capital. Americans also were notably present in legaltech, defense & dual use, and cybersecurity.

The investment consensus is in vertical AI, semiconductors or advanced hardware while verticals Europeans seem to betting on that US capital is ignoring include proptech, construction, vertical B2B marketplaces, healthtech and energy+climate.

Vertical / agentic AI represents about a quarter of all the European pre-seed/seed deals - the largest single cluster in the broader market for Q1. Judging from the past five quarters evolution, it kind of hit a ceiling around 130 transactions: 120 deals (Q1-25) → 140 (Q2-25) → 134 (Q3-25) → 133 (Q4-25) → 130 (Q1-26).

Climate deals turned into a sovereign type of vertical - Hexana and Hades Mining are lead examples of a category below the 2025 quarter average frequencies, but with a higher average check ($5.7M).

Consumer plays are long gone as they’re mostly lifestyle deals backed by angels - here just for my personal belief that we will see a consumer resurgence if only for what goes down must come up eventually, while FB and Linkedin are 20 years old dinosaurs.

Fintech, robotics, gaming are all going down - while in fintech all eyes are on Revolut and Stripe non-IPO moves, it’s especially interesting for robots, which is a hot topic with tons of marketing and scouting but a capex intensive, hard to build category, which the Chinese makes it extremely cost competitive. Still early on the tech development cycle, for now robotics framing has transitioned rather into vertical AI applications while the physical AI narrative is being complemented by the agent narrative.

The European multistage funds are not really multistage anymore - they are quasi-absent from taking early stage risks, a trend that's taken shape for a while i.e 80% of European multistage checks in the past 5 quarters allocated at later stage. American ones, in contrast, are more active at early stage, in part due to an indirect GTM via scouts and accelerators + more marketing. YMMV and there are obvious exceptions, usually expensive, but it’s the real talk - the outside noise makes the local early stage market seem more hyped than it is. Btw, a good tell about the quality of this market is Point Nine Capital buying into Anthropic’s $30B series G - the Germans manage a typical early stage 200M investment fund.

The only notable new entrant to what seems to be an established and rather predictable MO: 20vc, which has evolved by stealing the playbook of the American blueprint expansion doubled down by a mainstream podcast, which plays a marketing role more efficient than many GPs would like to admit. 

Founders Fund is now doing European defence - namely Onodrim's $47M seed, which is the largest non-billion-dollar deal of the quarter and the first time for Founders Fund doing Euro defence (second if we count the unconfirmed Stark's 300M C also led by FF). Founders Fund has been shy about Euro biz as Peter Thiel did defense deals in Europe via Thiel Capital, which is his de facto family office, while Thiel's most active vehicle in Europe by far, Valar, is focused on fintech -> see ​FF Euro portfolio​. 

As a closing oddity, Bezos Expeditions, Jeff Bezos personal family office, notably chipped in to AMI Labs mega round. He's doing rarely personal European checks - fwiw, last year, he also invested in Nebius via Toloka along Shopify’s Russian CTO (Nebius is run by Russians in Amsterdam) and in Rivr (acquired eventually by Amazon this winter).

Top 180 most active investors in Europe in Q1 2026 (free to access but need account)

Tier one European investors and their (190) Euro deals from the past year.

Tier one American investors and their (250) Euro deals from the past year.

Euro startups at YC spring 2026.

Active investors - mega deals, early stage fundings in April.

Europe’s most active late stage investors.

Europe’s most active AI investors

Europe’s most active angels

“Dragos, appreciate the shoutout on nordic9 - someone had told me they learned about us via there. Very much appreciated 🙏🙏” - startup founder.

313 out of the 537 early stage startups we put on the radar last year raised an ulterior round - that's almost 60%.

it’s what investors look for and what media will catch up with about six months later. Same goes for the stealth founders, btw.

available to our Pro customers.

France announced 71 foreign investment projects worth a combined €93 billion, mostly centered on artificial intelligence and data centres.

Prosus gets until October 11 for Delivery Hero sale after Uber takeover bid at €10B - Prosus was required to reduce its stake in DH as part of the remedies that secured EU approval for its acquisition of Just Eat Takeaway. The original commitment required Prosus to sell down its Delivery Hero holding within a set period.

Balderton is running a timely marketing campaign called Built in Europe.

A Spanish soccer team on the brink of being kicked to a lower league hedged its risk by placing a multimillion-dollar bet against itself on Kalshi - losing the game would have meant millions in lost ticket and broadcast revenue. They won though - on the other side of the Spanish team’s trade was Susquehanna, which took home more than $1 million.

Gold has officially replaced US Treasuries as the world’s largest central bank reserve asset, per ECB - accounts for 27% of global official reserves compared to the 22% held in US government bonds

French billionaire Pierre-Edouard Sterin is pleading with lawmakers to modify rules so he can disinherit his five children, saying he prefers to give his fortune to charity.

Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary wants UK airports to curb morning alcohol sales, saying drunken passengers now force the low-cost carrier to divert nearly one flight a day. The Brits are obviously against the idea.

Anthropic calls for pause of global AI development.

Apple is expected to announce a revamped Siri next week at WWDC.

SpaceX IPO 17-minute video pitch.

A 560 kg iron meteorite exploded over Massachusetts in the US.

Linkedin is not only full of useless noise makers but also of Chinese spies.

Some investors are ghosting the market - there’s a good tool to find out which.

The ideas worth stealing from what YC tells you what to build.

The Knicks are 2-0 on the NBA Finals and third game is in NYC on Monday, when Trump is expected to attend. Cheapest ticket price is $8k.

Is this investor a fit for my raise?