Josh Payne, CEO and founder of Nscale, one of the big AI infrastructure bets in Q1. Image: Adam Isfendiyar
European start-ups raised a two-year high of $17bn in Q1 2026, with AI, enterprise applications and deep tech the big winners.
The headline number looks healthy. European tech funding climbed 24pc year-on-year to $17bn across 764 rounds in the first quarter of 2026, its strongest quarter in two years. That’s according to the Tracxn Europe Tech Funding Report, Q1 2026.
However, when we dig into where the money went, a reprioritisation appears to be underway – away from fintech and toward the infrastructure powering the next generation of AI and robotics. AI infrastructure was the single largest funding category, pulling in $4.8bn. Three deals alone – Nscale’s $2bn Series C, Neura Robotics’ $1.2bn Series C and Wayve’s $1.2bn Series D – accounted for more than $4.4bn of a late-stage surge that rose 73pc compared to Q1 2025.
Enterprise applications attracted $12.7bn in total, a massive 101pc increase over both Q4 2025 and the same period last year, as investors pivoted toward compute-intensive, long-duration bets like high-performance computing.
