A Celebration of European Human Intelligence Across Europe & Israel
These stories reflect a region that is no longer just "catching up" to Silicon Valley, but setting its own pace
The biggest shift since we set up GV’s London base in 2014 isn’t actually the financial capital, it’s the human capital. After all, every great tech company is fundamentally a people business. It’s a bit of a paradox, but even in this era of breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence, the most critical factor remains Human Intelligence. Ultimately, we aren't just investing in models or compute; we are investing in the people with the vision to harness and build them. The only real ceiling on a generational business is the caliber of the team behind it, and Europe is now home to an incredible concentration of that brilliance.
The GV team has now invested in 65 companies across 13 countries in Europe and Israel, doubling down on the region since 2023, with the majority of the portfolio in London. While we invested roughly $500 million between 2014 and 2023, we have just crossed a significant milestone: over $1 billion invested across the ecosystem. This reflects our conviction that Europe and Israel are a core pillar of our global strategy, not a side bet. We see returns here that rival the best in the U.S., whether you look at category-defining outcomes like Q.ai in Israel, Lemonade, or CurrencyCloud.
To mark the occasion, we’ve profiled a number of these founders we’re proud to back. Their backgrounds are as diverse as the problems they’re solving. Our founders range from deep academic researchers and serial entrepreneurs to the operators-turned-founders who are now the heartbeat of the European ecosystem. These stories reflect a region that is no longer just "catching up" to Silicon Valley, but setting its own pace.
The growth of this ecosystem is driven by founders who are compounding their experience, and we are increasingly seeing cycles where success in the region is no longer isolated, but generative. This is evident in founders like Guy Podjarny, who applied the insights gained from building developer-first security platform, Snyk, to found Tessl, focusing on the next generation of AI-native devtools. Similarly, the talent and leadership that emerged from GoCardless were instrumental in the early days of Monzo, showing how each successful startup contributes to a self-sustaining network that fuels the next.
The founders we back are moving past the initial hype of generative AI to focus on production-ready applications that require deep domain expertise. In Israel, Aviad, and the team at Q.ai demonstrated the global caliber of Israeli talent by building world-class audio AI in stealth, leading to one of Apple's most significant acquisitions to date. We see this same focus on vertical expertise in founders tackling high-stakes sectors where precision is non-negotiable, such as Pierre Proner at Lawhive in the legal space building in London, and Din Bisvac tackling property management with Buena in Berlin.
Beyond software, there is a growing cohort of founders building at the intersection of AI, defense, and aerospace. Raycho Raychev at EnduroSat, along with the teams at LuaBio and Distance Technologies, represent a shift toward frontier technology in a time when European sovereignty is becoming increasingly important. This density of talent is supported by a robust pipeline, with roughly one-third of the world’s graduating AI Masters students now based in Europe. London remains a primary hub, where two-thirds of our European portfolio companies are based; but, the talent we track is increasingly distributed, from Helsinki to Tel Aviv.
As we look toward the next decade, the nature of scaling is fundamentally changing. We are entering an era where AI allows teams to remain leaner for longer, shifting the focus from head-count to talent density. In this environment, each hire carries more weight, and the ability to automate the routine allows founders to focus entirely on the core breakthroughs that define their category. The speed of innovation is accelerating, and the market is moving faster than ever. European funding rounds have never been bigger, and unicorn status is being reached before product market fit. In this environment, we are placing fewer, bigger bets, with our average check size more than doubling in the last two years for companies like Monzo, Synthesia, and Lawhive.
The infrastructure for this future is already being laid; even if there is a market correction the current investment in AI data centers will deliver a "peace dividend" of democratized intelligence, enabling the next generation of founders to build with a level of efficiency we are only beginning to see. Our focus remains on identifying those rare individuals who can harness these tools to build for the long term, ensuring the next chapter of European tech is even more impactful than the last.
