Lovable CEO Anton Osika is bullish on Europe.
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Call it Europemaxxing. Call it a Scandinavian surge. Whatever is happening, Europe's tech scene is feeling hot.From Legora to Lovable, Klarna to Yann LeCunn's new AMI Labs, a new generation of European startups is bedding in and defying the pull of Silicon Valley. In some areas, they're matching or pulling in front of their US rivals.Swedish AI legal startup Legora, a challenger to US-headquartered Harvey, says it counts 20% of the 100 highest-grossing US law firms among its customers, and last month hit a major revenue milestone. The Swedish vibe-coding titan Lovable, valued at $6.6 billion, recently saw its recurring revenue jump 33% in a month — and now it's looking for acquisitions."A structural shift is happening in the European business landscape," Lovable CEO Anton Osika told Business Insider. "Europe has a long history of producing deep technical talent but was traditionally viewed as weaker in growing companies to global scale."What's behind the shift? Founders and VCs told Business Insider that it's a combination of AI, access to capital, and the flywheel effect from established European tech companies like Spotify and Klarna. And it's changing how tech talent flows across the Atlantic."It is not recency bias," George Robson, a partner at the US-headquartered VC firm Sequoia, told Business Insider. "Something has genuinely shifted — and I think it has been building for a lot longer than the last 12 months of headlines suggest."AI shakes up scalingFor decades, the pattern was similar: a company born in Europe would grow, struggle to scale beyond a certain point, and then move to the US. DeepMind and Darktrace are some of the biggest companies to have ended up under the purview of the US, one way or another.
