Following a record-high vintage in 2017, investments in European innovation stabilized at $16.3B in 2018. Despite the absence of “mega-rounds”, 2018 remains a strong year for European innovation.
Clipperton, in partnership with Digimind, releases its European Innovation Financing report covering the full year 2018.
Click here to download the report.
Key highlights of this study are:
- The investment in European innovation remains stable vs. 2017 at $16Bn.
- Confirmed trend: deceleration of the volume of early stage deals.
- French Tech is booming: +45% year-on-year for a record $4Bn.
- Large deals driven both by “confirmed leaders” such as Auto1, Deezer, N26, Cabify and rising stars Voodoo, Graphcore, Dataiku, Nextthink etc.
Thibaut Revel, Managing Partner at Clipperton, wrote:
In our January 2018 report, we were wondering whether the 2017 record vintage for European tech financing would be the last step before a down-cycle. 2018 proved to be a time for stabilization, with a slightly lower total invested amount linked to less inflated mega-deals. The data indicate a lower activity of early stage transactions – just like in 2017 – which should have an impact in the medium term. Nevertheless the thesis of a soft landing at work seems convincing.
In this stable environment, it is worth pointing out the super strong performance of the French Tech, with tech investments in France not so far from the UK (the gap narrowed at c.20%). In terms of financial sustainability, the health of the ecosytem in the years to come will require major exits. France, in particular, needs to score a few home-runs: the last couple of years evidenced a lack of unicorn exits, especially compared to the UK and Germany.
Fore more information, please contact:
- Thibaut Revel, Managing Partner
- Martin Vielle, Director
About Clipperton
Clipperton is a European independent corporate finance advisory firm exclusively dedicated to the Technology space, advising innovative companies on M&A transactions, debt financings and equity offerings. With offices in London, Berlin, and Paris and an international reach, Clipperton is a European leader in Technology financial advisory. Over the past 15 years, the team has successfully completed more than 250 high profile transactions globally.
About Digimind and WhoGotFunded.com
Digimind is a SaaS intelligence software company based in Paris, Boston and Singapore, providing advanced information management platforms and technologies that perform massive data collection, automatic intelligence extraction and visualisation. Using its unique web mining expertise, Digimind developed WhoGotFunded.com, the world’s most comprehensive funding database, discovering over 100 fresh funding deals every day in real time all across the world.