It’s a question we’ve heard again and again over the past months — from investors, from policymakers, and most importantly, from founders: Is Europe finally having its moment?
At General Catalyst, we believe the answer is yes — but making it last will take discipline and commitment.
What’s happening now isn’t just a surge in entrepreneurial energy. It’s a mindset shift. More and more, founders are choosing to build with Europe in mind, not just as a market but as a mission. That’s especially true for second-time founders and experienced operators. They’re founding to build European resilience.
We see this most clearly in strategically vital sectors like AI, defence and energy. In these fields, what’s being built matters not just economically, but politically. Take Helsing, led by NaturalMotion founder Torsten Reil, working at the frontier of software and national security. Or Nexos AI, founded by Tomas Okmanas after cofounding Nord Security and Hostinger, building an AI platform for enterprises. Or Octopus Energy, accelerating the energy transition globally from the UK with the ambition to reshape how green energy is generated and consumed.
But to maintain this momentum, we need to see four key things.
1/ Global talent needs to choose Europe
What these companies share isn’t just deep tech. It’s clarity of purpose. That’s helping them attract top-tier global talent to solve complex engineering problems with global relevance. It also helps them bring European talent back home. More and more founders are succeeding in convincing experienced operators from the US and elsewhere to return to Europe — drawn by a sense of mission that has only recently returned to parts of the ecosystem.
But it’s still not easy. Many senior operators are deeply embedded in US networks and receive compensation packages few European startups can match. There’s also lingering uncertainty over whether the European environment can fully support their ambition and provide the professional infrastructure they’ve come to expect.
2/ Governments and corporates need to put their money where their mouth is
Governments, corporates and consumers are looking for resilient systems built around European values. In AI, this means privacy-conscious models and products tailored to local languages and regulations.
Policymakers are also taking note. There’s growing momentum behind industrial strategies, procurement reform and tech sovereignty. The talk about ‘European champions’ is finally back in action. Various initiatives, such as EU Inc — which is pushing for a harmonised corporate entity across the EU — are taken seriously now. While it’s far from perfect and we need to reform regulations such as the EU AI Act, the urgency to change the status quo has moved in the right direction. Now focus must shift to execution — by making public procurement more accessible for startups, opening up strategic datasets and aligning funding instruments with the pace of early-stage innovation.
Even large corporates, long seen as slow adopters, are starting to partner with startups in ways that would’ve seemed unlikely five years ago. Siemens, for instance, is collaborating with Swiss startup Ethon AI to optimise manufacturing quality management using AI-driven data analytics. Renault, meanwhile, plans to fully automate its Villeroy logistics facility, south of Paris, with French startup Exotec’s Skypod robots; and Novo Nordisk is teaming up with Dutch startup Cradle on AI-driven drug discovery.
These kinds of collaborations show that some of Europe’s largest firms are beginning to actively co-develop with the startup ecosystem. But beyond dialogue, we also need to see real commitment. If corporates want these partnerships to move beyond pilots, they need to give their functional teams decision-making power, allocate dedicated budgets for scaling and share operational data where it enables joint progress. Too many collaborations still stall after the prototype phase.
3/ Talent needs to move on faster
We as investors often spend too much time managing the downside risk, even in cases where modest outcomes don’t meaningfully impact the performance of a fund. Instead of prolonging something that doesn’t land, we should support founders in making clear decisions, pivot or moving on. That requires more honesty about when a model has run its course. Too often, companies linger long past their viability — actually trapping talent that could be building the next thing. We believe talent circulation can be as important as capital deployment.
4/ Founders need to build platforms, not just products
Founders need to absorb more of the pace and pragmatism you find in ecosystems like San Francisco or New York. Iteration cycles there are short, feedback is immediate and urgency is part of the culture. We don’t need to copy it entirely — but in a world of global fierce competition, speed and velocity are key. Companies like Lovable and Pigment have shown what fast, mission-driven execution can look like in Europe — launching, testing and iterating with real intensity. But in too many cases, European startups still over-index on perfectionism and consensus-building, which slows them down when urgency is needed.
Moreover, we need to take the concept of platforms much more seriously. Europe has promising product companies, but too few of them take the next step. Platforms allow others — whether developers, partners or customers — to build on top of a shared foundation. This creates compounding value: every new integration or use case makes the core product more useful to everyone else. Growth no longer scales linearly with internal sources but accelerates through a broader ecosystem.
We’re seeing first signs of this shift. Helsing and Mistral, for example, have announced a strategic partnership to jointly develop AI models that combine operational defence systems with advanced foundation model capabilities. By aligning their technologies, they aim to create a shared foundation that others in the defence ecosystem can build on and adapt to local needs.
Data processing unicorn Celonis, meanwhile, is evolving in a similar direction. It enables software vendors and consultancies to build tailored apps on top of its execution-management core — for example in areas like payment reconciliation, tax compliance or plant operations. This setup lets others extend the technology to specific needs without having to rebuild core infrastructure. In this case, it’s a way to turn process mining into a global platform — capturing a much broader opportunity rather than stopping at a local maximum.
This kind of ecosystem thinking, where value grows with every external contributor, remains rare in Europe, but is gaining momentum. We need more of this ambition, and the support structures that allow it to grow.
The foundations are there. Europe’s founder energy is back. And this time, it’s being channelled into sectors that we think matter — by people who’ve built before and are committed to doing it again, better. If we succeed in building the scaffolding around it, Europe will have a handful of $100bn companies in a couple of years.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/europe-founder-renaissance-real/
