Available worldwide via Amazon (Kindle Edition)
US: $5.99
Other regions: Local Amazon pricing
Available here:
https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B0GMXLX56T
Europe is beginning to build the funds its scale-ups need. But growth capital is only a bridge. Without sufficient liquidity, specialist investors and a credible European exit market, its most successful technology companies may still gravitate towards New York.
Jean-Christophe Laloux’s appointment may signal a new phase for the European Investment Fund: moving beyond filling individual financing gaps towards creating the structures, incentives and partnerships through which private capital becomes willing to carry European strategic risk.
Axelera AI shows how Europe’s semiconductor challenge extends beyond invention. The Eindhoven company is building energy-efficient AI processors, attracting substantial capital and global customers. The next test is whether Europe can also provide the adoption, liquidity and public markets required for long-term scale.
Siemens Financial Services shows how industrial transformation increasingly depends on more than technology. By combining industrial knowledge with financing capacity, Siemens can help move projects from technical possibility to commercial deployment — making capital part of the industrial architecture itself.
EQT has identified more than 1,000 potential targets for the Scaleup Europe Fund. The deeper question is what happens next: whether Europe’s exchanges, institutional investors and regulators are ready when today’s scale-ups become tomorrow’s multibillion-euro public companies.
Feedzai is not the next Scaleup Europe prediction. It is a test case for a harder question: whether Europe can remain financially relevant when its most promising technology companies become large, global and strategically important.
The European Investment Fund rarely chooses individual winners. Its deeper role is to share risk, anchor investment vehicles and strengthen the transition from innovation to investability — helping private capital move where markets are not yet ready to move alone.
Warsaw Stock Exchange helped Poland transition towards a market economy. Three decades later, it faces a different challenge: can Warsaw connect the growing companies and industries of Central and Eastern Europe with the deeper pools of capital available across Europe?
Europe has never lacked innovation. Its challenge has been transforming research excellence into global companies that remain rooted in Europe. The scale-up gap raises a deeper question: can Europe build the capital architecture needed to turn innovation into ownership, influence and long-term sovereignty?
Europe has long excelled at generating knowledge, innovation and entrepreneurship. Retaining ownership and long-term value creation has proven more difficult. Emerging growth initiatives suggest that Europe may finally be learning not only how to innovate, but also how to finance its own future.
