European startups are using AI to reinvent their business models
The following contribution is from the Financial Times website and is written by John Thornhill, Innovation Editor of the Financial Times and a weekly column on the impact of technology. He is also the founder and editorial director of Sifted, the website for European startups supported by the Financial Times, and the founder of FT Forums, which hosts monthly meetings for senior executives.
The region can compete with US technology in the application of artificial intelligence
Mario Draghi could not have been more direct. The former Italian prime minister and former president of the European Central Bank warned last year that Europe faced an «existential challenge» unless it could harness the latest technologies to boost its productivity.
In his landmark competitiveness report, Draghi noted that Europe had largely been left out of the previous internet revolution, noting that the EU accounted for only four of the world’s top 50 tech companies.
«The EU is lacking in the emerging technologies that will drive future growth,» he wrote. «Europe must fundamentally refocus its collective efforts to close the innovation gap with the United States and China.»
The 150 European startup hubs recognized in this Financial Times report are undoubtedly doing their best to boost the region’s innovative potential.
They have helped incubate a new generation of ambitious companies, such as Klarna, Celonis, Isar Aerospace, Hugging Face, Alan, and Pasqal,
spanning finance, software, space, artificial intelligence, insurance, and quantum technology.
With the winds going, it’s possible that at least some of these companies will emerge as global leaders in their sectors and boost Europe’s competitiveness, as Draghi dreams.
Has Europe’s great hope for AI lost its momentum?
It’s striking how many startups are emerging in Europe that are AI companies, or that use AI to reinvent business models for traditional industries.
At the hardware and infrastructure level, Europe may have few, if any, companies that can compete with US groups like Nvidia, Alphabet, Microsoft, and OpenAI, but it has a much stronger position at the application level.
Dozens of startups are emerging across Europe seeking to use AI to redesign workflows in virtually every sector.
Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder of Wise and currently a partner at the venture capital group Plural, says that large US tech companies definitely have a significant advantage in AI today.
“But I think all applications will be rebuilt with AI, and in that sense, Europe has a fantastic opportunity to compete,” he adds.
To identify Europe’s top startup hubs (centers for founders that offer programs to develop and grow a company),
the Financial Times partnered with the international data and research company Statista, as well as Sifted, the Financial Times-backed media startup that covers the European tech sector.
The opinions of investors, entrepreneurs, and academics were incorporated into the model, which also took into account the success of these centers’ graduates.
The primary criterion for the ranking came from the alumni themselves, who were asked to evaluate the quality of the centers in terms of providing mentorship, training, infrastructure, legal assistance, networking, and funding opportunities.
The top startup centers ranged from university branches to fully commercial companies.
For the second year in a row, UnternehmerTUM topped the ranking. This Munich-based center was founded in 2002 as a non-profit organization by entrepreneur Susanne Klatten, a billionaire heir to the Quandt family fortune, with the goal of developing a new entrepreneurial culture in Germany.
Affiliated with the Technical University of Munich, the center has a broad network of scientists, entrepreneurs, and investors who can support a company from its launch to its IPO. The center has incubated more than 1,000 companies, including the transportation group FlixMobility and the artificial intelligence startup Konux.
In second place in the ranking was Paris-based Station F, which bills itself as the world’s largest startup campus.
Founded in 2017 by French entrepreneur Xavier Niel, Station F is home to 1,000 startups, many of them focused on AI.
Of the incubator’s 40 best-performing startups, 34 have AI at the heart of their business models.
«Europe can create competitive AI models today,» Niel recently told the Financial Times. «I think we can achieve great things with a few hundred million euros.»
In third place was Start2 Group, which refers to another Munich-based center rather than a strategic arms reduction treaty. Start2 works closely with the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, which funds most of the programs for local startups.
However, the group has a strong international focus, with a presence in 18 countries and subsidiaries in the United States and Asia.
The highest-ranked UK startup hub was Founders Factory, which took fifth place in the ranking.
The hub, which collaborates with nearly 60 large corporate partners across four continents, is both a startup promoter and an early-stage investor. Its portfolio of startups, now numbering over 300, has raised $1 billion in capital since 2015.
In total, the UK accounted for 29 of the top 150 European startup hubs, followed by Germany with 19, Eastern Europe with 17, and Scandinavia and the Baltics with 16.
Nearly 3,000 startup hubs were identified as potential candidates for the ranking and invited to apply. To participate, hubs had to have been operating since at least 2020, have a physical location in Europe, and operate at least one incubation or acceleration program.
Top 10: AI Startups in Europe
The following contribution is from AI Magazine’s self-described portal: we connect the world’s leading AI brands and their most prominent executives with the latest trends, industry perspectives, and influential projects as the world embraces technology and digital transformation. AI Magazine is an established, trusted, and leading publication on all things AI, connecting with a highly targeted audience of global executives.
We offer you the perfect platform to showcase your products and services, share your achievements, and strengthen your reputation in the industry.
And the author is Amber Jackson, the current editor of Data Centre Magazine and Mobile Magazine. She has previously covered all BizClik publications and, most recently, Technology Magazine. With a Master’s degree from King’s College London, she has worked as a writer and freelancer for the past five years.
AI Magazine explores some of the leading AI startups currently in Europe.
We examine some of the fastest-growing AI startups in Europe, which are using this technology to transform the business landscape across multiple sectors.
As AI becomes increasingly attractive to businesses as it develops rapidly, more and more startups are emerging with the goal of developing new ways to leverage it.
Large organizations have emerged from the ground up, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, which now have access to significant levels of funding and world-leading partnerships to advance the technology.
These startups are harnessing the power of AI to manage the growing demand for the technology and adapt it to drive global innovation.
With this in mind, AI Magazine explores some of the leading AI startups currently operating in Europe.
- Transmetrics
Founder(s): Asparuh Koev
Year founded: 2013
Total funding: $8.11 million
Based in Bulgaria, Transmetrics was designed to optimize the supply chain. Its goal is to improve logistics planning and asset management by harnessing the power of predictive analytics, AI, and machine learning.
Its approach automatically extracts data and uses AI tools to analyze, model, and predict transportation flows.
As a result, the insights gained save time and resources and help solve supply chain challenges in various sectors, such as fleet maintenance, long-distance route planning, and empty container management.
- PhysicsX:
Founder(s): Robin Tuluie, PhD
Year Founded: 2019
Total Funding: $32M
PhysicsX leverages generative AI (GenAI) to revolutionize engineering in key business sectors such as automotive, aerospace, renewable energy, and materials production.
The company is currently developing AI and simulation engineering technologies to reinvent the design and operation of machines and products.
The startup’s goal is also to use AI to analyze the impact of applications on climate and human health.
Its investors include industry giants such as Standard Investment, NGP Energy, and Radius Capital.
- Aleph Alpha
Founder(s): Jonas Andrulis and Samuel Weinbach.
Founded: 2019
Total Funding: $500 million USD
Aleph Alpha, based in Germany, offers a platform to help businesses and governments develop cutting-edge AI tools and research.
These tools include large language models (LLMs) trained in five languages and the ability to modify systems to adapt to the needs of specialized environments.
Aleph Alpha was founded by professionals who previously worked at leading organizations such as Apple, SAP, and Deloitte.
The company seeks to integrate AI into platforms and applications across various business sectors to facilitate greater innovation and improve productivity.
In its June 2023 funding round, the organization received backing from leading technology companies such as SAP SE, Earlybird Venture Capital, and global chipmaker Nvidia.
- TechWolf
Founder(s): Mikaël Wornoo, Andreas De Neve, and Jeroen Van Hautte
Year founded: 2018
Total funding: $12 million
TechWolf is an AI-powered HR technology solution that enables companies to focus more on skills.
Its goal is to provide companies with the tools they need to address new and complex challenges across their operations.
By leveraging AI-powered skills intelligence, its Skill Engine tool connects existing systems using an application programming interface (API)-based approach to gain instant, up-to-date, and unbiased insight into your employees’ skills and gaps in less than eight weeks.
- Endel
Founder(s): Oleg Stavitsky, Protey Temen, Philipp Petrenko, Dmitry Evgrafov, Kirill Bulatsev, Dmitry Bezugly
Year founded: 2018
Total funding: $21.1 million
Endel is a paid generative music app that creates personalized soundscapes that adapt to the user’s activities.
The app offers preset modes for relaxation, focus, sleep, and movement, and reacts to time of day, weather, heart rate, and location to create unique compositions.
The startup leverages a cross-platform ecosystem of AI-powered apps that creates what it describes as personalized functional soundscapes.
Headquartered in Berlin, Germany, Endel raised $15 million in a Series B funding round in 2022.
- Graphcore
Founder(s): Nigel Toon, Simon Knowles
Year founded: 2016
Total funding: $2.8 billion (total valuation)
Graphcore Limited is a British semiconductor company developing accelerators for AI and machine learning.
It has introduced a massively parallel Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU) that houses the complete machine learning model within the processor.
The company’s IPU technology seeks to revolutionize various business sectors by accelerating AI applications to achieve societal advancements, including improving drug discovery and supporting decarbonization.
After raising $222 million in Series E funding in 2020, Graphcore’s total valuation now stands at $2.8 billion.
- Stability.ai
Founder(s): Mohammad Emad Mostaque
Year founded: 2019
Total funding: $101 million
Stability.ai is one of the world’s leading open-source AI companies.
Its goal is to offer innovative, open-access AI models with minimal resources in images, language, code, and audio.
With the aim of democratizing AI and laying the global foundation for reaching humanity’s full potential, Stability.ai has a unique vision and approach to AI through its openness.
Its goal is to foster a culture of trust, transparency, innovation, and integrity in AI.
The London-based company is currently one of the leading AI startups in Europe. In 2022, it reached unicorn status with a valuation of $1 billion.
- DeepL
Founder(s): Dr. Jaroslaw “Jarek” Kutylowski
Year Founded: 2009
Total Funding: $100 Million
DeepL Translator is a neural machine translation service launched in August 2017 and owned by the German company DeepL SE.
This real-time language translation program reached unicorn status by raising $106 million in funding in January 2023, which included backing from Atomico, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Institutional Venture Partners.
The program translates texts using artificial neural networks trained on millions of translated texts.
Its creators have placed great emphasis on the selective acquisition of specialized training data to enable their network to achieve higher translation quality.
- Mistral AI
Founders: Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, and Timothée Lacroix
Founded: 2023
Total Funding: $2 billion total valuation
Mistral AI is a French early AI model maker that rose to prominence in June 2023 by raising €105 million ($112 million) in its seed funding round from investors including Headline, Index Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Bpifrance.
The company has established several notable commercial partnerships to advance AI, including with Snowflake in March 2024 to democratize access to the technology.
Both organizations are working to provide enterprises with industry-leading AI language models to leverage more secure early AI technology.
Mistral AI’s latest and most powerful model, Mistral Large, is available on Snowflake Data Cloud, enabling customers to securely leverage early AI with their enterprise data and build applications quickly and easily.
- Synthesia
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Founder(s): Victor Riparbelli, Steffen Tjerrild, Matthias Niessner, Lourdes Agapito
Year Founded: 2017
Total Funding: $157 million USD
Synthesia is a synthetic media generation platform that seeks to leverage AI to democratize video creation.
This video creator allows users to create talking head videos, or avatars, with text input and a short sample video of an actor.
Founded in 2017 by a team of AI researchers and entrepreneurs, its Gen AI tools seek to empower users to create video content without cameras, microphones, or studios. It is designed to radically change the content creation process and unleash human creativity.
Headquartered in London, its user base includes companies such as Amazon, Tiffany & Co, IHG Hotels & Resorts, Reuters, Accenture, and the BBC. The company surpassed the $1 billion valuation mark in June 2023 and achieved unicorn status.
AI Startups in Europe
The following contribution is from the MMC Ventures portal, a research-focused venture capital firm that has backed more than 60 early-stage and high-growth technology companies since 2000. MMC’s research team provides the Firm with deep and differentiated knowledge of emerging technologies and industry dynamics to identify attractive investment opportunities. MMC’s research team als
