The European innovation eco-system remained solid in 2016 with $12 billion invested in tech start-ups, almost the same level as in 2015.
Clipperton, in partnership with Digimind, releases its European Innovation Financing report covering the full year 2016.
Click here to download the newsletter: European Innovation Financing report – January 2017
The report was also covered by Techcrunch, read the article here
Key highlights of this study are:
- Strong H2 at $6B investment value, in line with the two previous semesters.
- Increasing volume of smaller deals (below $30m), offsetting a decline in larger rounds.
- Mixed geographical dynamics: momentum in France and Spain / Portugal vs. slow-down in the Nordics.
- Pick-up of the activity of large traditional PE funds in Tech (KKR, Goldman…) raising their game to capture a significant share of the large deals, while corporates remain hot in sectors such as automotive tech and life sciences.
Thibaut Revel, Partner at Clipperton, wrote:
“The party is not over in the European tech landscape as 2016 ended with a level of tech investment at $12B almost on par with 2015 record level, once currency effects are taken into account.
Our H1 2016 report pointed out the increasing reliance on the UK growth engine, and the strength of the UK market is confirmed with 24% yearly growth for UK transactions in nominal terms (before a negative currency effect of (12%)). However, H2 2016 was a bit lower than H1 in the UK, and the dynamics will have to be monitored closely as the real impact of the Brexit is still ahead of us. France enjoyed a great H2 2016 with a lion’s share of the top deals (OVH, Sigfox, Devialet) and Q4 very close to the UK level ($870m vs. $970m).
Beyond topline figures, a remarkable new driving force lies in the growing appetite of tier-one Private Equity platforms for the tech space. KKR has made landmark minority investments in OVH (hosting) and Darktrace (cyber), while several big players announced new significant funds dedicated to technology and growth equity (KKR Next Generation Technology Growth Fund, BridgePoint, EQT, etc.). On the other hand, our data highlights a real slow-down in large rounds in 2016 despite the strong activity by large PE and Corporates; potentially a healthy pause in the European ‘unicorns’ phenomenon.”
Contacts
Clipperton
Thibaut REVEL
Partner
trevel@clipperton.net
Martin VIELLE
Vice President
mvielle@clipperton.net
About Clipperton
Clipperton is a European independent corporate finance advisory firm exclusively dedicated to the Technology space, advising innovative companies on M&A transactions, debt financings and equity offerings. With offices in London, Berlin, and Paris and an international reach, Clipperton is a European leader in Technology financial advisory. Over the past 15 years, the team has successfully completed more than 200 high profile transactions globally.
About Digimind and WhoGotFunded.com
Digimind is a SaaS intelligence software company based in Paris, Boston and Singapore, providing advanced information management platforms and technologies that perform massive data collection, automatic intelligence extraction and visualisation. Using its unique web mining expertise, Digimind developed WhoGotFunded.com, the world’s most comprehensive funding database, discovering over 100 fresh funding deals every day in real time all across the world.