LONDON — It’s been a busy week for the European technology sector.
On Tuesday, London-headquartered artificial intelligence startup ElevenLabs announced it would let employees sell shares in a secondary round that doubles its valuation to $6.6 billion.
Then, Dutch chip firm ASML on Wednesday confirmed it was leading French AI firm Mistral’s 1.7 billion-euro Series C funding round at a valuation of 11.7 billion euros ($13.7 billion) — up from 5.8 billion euros last year. Mistral is considered a competitor to the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic.
To cap it off, Swedish fintech firm Klarna on Thursday debuted on the New York Stock Exchange after a long-awaited initial public offering. Klarna shares ended the day at $45.82, giving it a market value of over $17 billion.
These developments have revived hopes that Europe is capable of developing a tech industry that can compete with the U.S. and Asia. For the past decade, investors have been talking up Europe’s potential to build valuable tech firms, rebuffing the idea that Silicon Valley is the only place to create innovative new ventures.
