Europe's tech sector just delivered its biggest week in years. Klarna's explosive $17 billion NYSE debut Thursday capped a remarkable stretch that saw ElevenLabs double to $6.6 billion and ASML lead Mistral AI's massive $14 billion funding round. After years of Silicon Valley dominance, European tech is finally proving it can compete on the global stage.
The numbers tell an unambiguous story - Europe's tech sector is having its moment. Klarna's Thursday trading debut saw shares close at $45.82, giving the Swedish buy-now-pay-later pioneer a market cap exceeding $17 billion. The performance vindicated investors who'd watched the company's valuation plummet 85% from its $45.6 billion peak during the 2022 market downturn.
But Klarna's IPO was just the crescendo in a week that redefined European tech ambitions. On Tuesday, London-based AI voice startup ElevenLabs announced a secondary share sale doubling its valuation to $6.6 billion. Then Wednesday brought the biggest surprise - Dutch semiconductor giant ASML confirmed it was leading French AI company Mistral's €1.7 billion Series C funding round.
The Mistral deal particularly caught Silicon Valley's attention. The company's valuation jumped to €11.7 billion ($13.7 billion) from €5.8 billion just last year, positioning it as a legitimate competitor to OpenAI and Anthropic. "Right now, the confluence of a huge new technological opportunity in the form of generative AI, as well as a community that has done it before and has access to the capital required, is, unsurprisingly, yielding a huge number of sector-defining companies," Suranga Chandratillake, partner at Balderton Capital, told CNBC.
The timing couldn't be more strategic. While U.S. tech megacaps combined are worth over $20 trillion according to recent analysis, venture firm Atomico pegged Europe's entire tech ecosystem at just $3 trillion in its latest "State of European Tech" report. The firm predicts that figure will reach $8 trillion by 2034, suggesting massive upside for early investors.
"Ten years ago, there wasn't a single European startup valued at over $50 billion; today, there are several," Jan Hammer, partner at Index Ventures, told . Index has backed European success stories including and payments processor .
