2025年度欧洲风险投资报告（英）

Contents Introduction3 Institutional Research Group Navina RajanSenior Research Analyst,EMEA Private Capitalnavina.rajan@pitchbook.com Deals4 Venture debt 9 pbinstitutionalresearch@pitchbook.com Spotlight: Europe’s IPO window to stay open11 Published on 16 January 2026 Exits13 Fundraising18 Introduction Elsewhere, trends within fundraising and the rest of theecosystem have also been divergent, with fundraisingsitting at a record low, whilst deals and exit value weremore resilient YoY. Within exits, a handful of large IPOs andacquisitions drove headline value whilst broader liquidityconditions remained weak. Beneath the surface, exit volumescontinued to trend lower, and M&A dominated activityhighlighted the ecosystem’s ongoing dependence on a smallset of transformative transactions to sustain momentum. Five key themes that shaped 2025: 1.AI: The dominant force in European tech. 2.Depressed liquidity: The new normal? 3.Secondaries: Moving from niche to necessity. 4.Fundraising: Entered its most constrained year on record. As liquidity remains depressed, and the underlyingexit market (excluding Klarna) has shown little growth,constrained distributions for LPs have continued, reinforcinga tough environment for allocations into the sector.Fundraising sat at a record low, as allocations gravitatedtowards smaller vehicles and emerging managers, resultingin compressed fund sizes and slower closes. Regionalleadership shifted as traditional hubs lost ground, anddespite a significant amount of open capital, subdued returnsand limited distributions raise questions over how quicklyfundraising can recover without a meaningful improvementin liquidity. 5.Geopolitical themes: Tariffs, defence reshoring, andmacroeconomic policy end the year with a mixed outlook. The landscape for venture in Europe has been mixedthrough 2025, with increasing divergence between differentecosystems and sectors. European deal value grew in 2025,where deal counts continued to contract. Activity was drivenby fewer, larger later stage rounds. By sector, it is clear thatAI has driven the major bifurcation in dealmaking areas of themarket this year. AI-related deals now account for 35.5% ofdeal value in Europe, making the ecosystem more delicatelybalanced between AI and non-AI-related sectors. Therefore,the big questions looking into 2026 are: Is there an AI bubble?And if so, could we see it burst next year in 2026? Stepping even further back, the above has taken placeamidst a more uncertain geopolitical and macroeconomicbackdrop, with rumours of rate hikes in Europe in 2026,following a dovish 2025. A lower rate environment could bebeneficial for deal activity in asset classes such as venturedebt, as companies seek more favourable financing ratesand the cost of financing decreases. Venture debt dealvalue has already proved relatively robust in 2025 despitedeclining volumes, supported by larger transactions and agrowing share of later-stage borrowers raising financing. Theresilience in activity comes despite an improving IPO windowand easing monetary conditions. Any shift in sentiment towards AI valuations couldreverberate across the broader venture landscape, testingthe resilience of non-AI sectors that have only recentlybegun to regain momentum. Therefore, we also wonder howresilient the European venture market would be without thedependence on bubble-like valuations. In 2025, excludingAI, the underlying market showed more muted dynamics,as several verticals lost momentum and core regions sawflatter growth, whilst peripheral markets benefited fromconcentrated, larger deals. Deals Venture deal value grows in 2025 2025 deal value sat at €66.2 billion, pacing 5.1% above 2024,as Q4 activity strengthened through the end of the year. 2025has been a story of value versus volume: European venturemarkets have continued to see a significant step down indeal volumes (20.6% decline YoY), yet value has been resilientas deal sizes have increased. By series, the landscape hasalso been mixed: Both the seed and Series C stages sawthe largest YoY declines in value, dropping by double digits,whilst the late stages—Series D and onwards—saw thegreatest step-up, increasing by 45.2% as cheque sizes haveincreased. In Q4 2025, specifically, the largest deals includeda megadeal from Revolut andŌura’s €775 million round inOctober, a rare position for a pure consumer firm to have,especially a non-AI-related one. Similarly, there was also arare appearance among the quarter’s top 10 deals from afoodtech startup: German online grocer Picnic’s €430 millionround followed other popular sectors such as AI startupBrevo. Revolut’s €2.6 billion round, which closed in Novemberand involved a secondary share sale, proved to be the largestdeal of the year. Overall, in 2025, the largest deals followingRevolut, included AI incumbents Mistral AI and Nsale, bothraising more than €1 billion in a single round. How does European venture look without AI? AI has been the