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No European venture-backed company is currently valued at $1 trillion. According to Dealroom’s count, as reported by The Next Web (TNW), zero European VC-backed companies reach that figure. What Dealroom founder and CEO Yoram Wijngaarde said at Wave by Vento in Turin on Thursday, October 8, 2026, was a conditional forecast: Europe’s first trillion-dollar VC-backed company “is going to be created,” and it may be a company that is still early stage today. He tied that outcome to Europe creating the conditions for such a company to scale. He did not name a candidate.
What the CEO actually said
Wijngaarde presented Dealroom data in a session titled “The state of the European Tech Ecosystem,” then spoke with Tom Wehmeier, partner and head of insights at Atomico. TNW quotes him as follows:
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“I think that the VC-backed ecosystem is going to overtake our industrial base in terms of total value created within the next five years, if we play our cards right. And I think that also the first trillion-dollar VC-backed company is going to be created. And it’s a company that’s maybe still early stage today, so we have to think about that future and also prepare for it and have the conditions for that to really happen.”
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Two parts of that sentence carry the meaning. The first is the phrase “if we play our cards right,” which makes the five-year overtaking claim conditional. The second is “maybe still early stage today,” which describes a company that could exist now without yet being visibly large. The statement is not a report that a company has reached that valuation, and TNW’s account does not identify one.
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Because the headline uses “startup” while the quote says “VC-backed company,” the more precise phrasing is the one the speaker used. A VC-backed company is one that has raised venture capital; it is not every European business, and the comparison is not a like-for-like accounting measure of the whole industrial base.
The numbers behind the claim
The figures below are Dealroom’s, as relayed in TNW’s account of the October 8, 2026 session. The report does not describe how Dealroom defined or calculated them, so treat them as attributed figures rather than independently checked results. The two columns are not always measured the same way: the first table compares company counts by threshold, and the US column is blank where TNW gave no comparable number.
| Measure (Dealroom, 2026, as reported by TNW) | Europe | United States |
|---|---|---|
| Startups that had raised at least $100,000 | 54,771 | 79,432 |
| Companies that had raised at least $100 million | 1,233 | 5,115 |
| VC-backed companies valued above $10 billion | 56 | not stated |
| Companies valued above $100 billion | 4 (TNW names Spotify, Arm, Booking.com and Revolut) | not stated |
| Companies valued at $1 trillion | 0 | 7 |
| Aggregate value of VC-backed companies | $4.4 trillion | not stated |
The capital figures come from the speakers rather than from the company-count dataset, and they use different currencies. Do not add euro and dollar figures together or treat them as one pool.
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|---|---|---|
| Annual European venture investment | $89 billion | Wijngaarde, 2026 |
| Capital held by European pension funds and insurers | About €15 trillion | Wehmeier, 2026 |
| Venture capital invested by those institutions over the preceding decade | €15.5 billion | Wehmeier, 2026 |
| European capital directed to bonds issued by US hyperscalers in 2026 | About $50 billion | Wehmeier, 2026 |
| Annual European public procurement | About €2 trillion | Wehmeier, 2026; he argued little reaches startups outside areas such as defence |
| Effect of directing 1% of European pension capital to venture capital | Scale-up funding up 50% | Wijngaarde’s estimate, not an independently established effect |
Why the speakers think Europe may fall short
The argument is not that Europe lacks companies. It is that the gap with the United States is larger at later stages than at early ones, and that value created in Europe may not stay there.
The late-stage gap
According to TNW, Wijngaarde said European venture investment is rising but that the gap with the US widens at later funding stages. He also said overseas investors own most of the later-stage shares in Europe’s most successful startups, so gains can leave Europe. On the question of whether Europe can produce unicorns at all, he said that for the same amount raised, European startups were as likely to become unicorns as American ones. The difference, in his account, is what happens after the first rounds.
Pension and insurance capital
The pension question is where the speakers were most specific. Wijngaarde estimated that directing 1% of European pension capital into venture capital would raise available scale-up funding by 50%. That is his estimate as reported by TNW, not a measured result. Wehmeier’s figures put the pool in context: roughly €15 trillion is held by European pension funds and insurers, while those institutions invested €15.5 billion in venture capital over the preceding decade. Wehmeier also said about $50 billion of European capital in 2026 went into bonds issued by US hyperscalers. The report does not say whether any of that money could or should have been invested in European startups instead, so that link is an inference the reader should draw with care.
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Restructuring costs and where founders build
Wijngaarde linked higher costs of restructuring a company to fewer unicorns per person in Spain, Italy and France, contrasting those countries with Denmark and the United States. He also said about 42% of European unicorn founders built their companies in the US. These are reported arguments from the session. The report does not provide the underlying calculations, so they are best read as the speaker’s framing of the problem.
Policy proposals discussed
The speakers did not present more capital as a complete fix. TNW reports that the discussion covered the following proposals and problems, with no quantified effect given for any of them:
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- Restructuring rules: higher costs of restructuring a company, which Wijngaarde linked to fewer unicorns per person.
- Capital-market fragmentation: the speakers backed a single European capital market.
- EU Inc: the speakers backed the proposed EU Inc company form.
- Public procurement: the speakers called for more startup access to public procurement in areas beyond defence, against a backdrop of about €2 trillion in annual European public procurement.
- Institutional allocation: directing pension and insurance capital toward venture, which Wijngaarde estimated would raise scale-up funding by 50% at a 1% allocation.
Each item is a proposal or a speaker’s argument. None is a tested policy outcome, and the report does not measure how much any one of them would change the number of European trillion-dollar companies.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to read the claim
When you see this forecast repeated, check four things:
- Who said it: the trillion-dollar statement is Wijngaarde’s forecast, reported by TNW from a session on October 8, 2026.
- What counts as VC-backed: Dealroom’s company counts and valuations refer to venture-backed companies. Count-based comparisons use thresholds, such as $100,000 or $100 million raised, and valuation comparisons use thresholds such as $10 billion or $1 trillion.
- What was measured: the company counts measure fundraising and valuation thresholds, while the capital figures measure annual investment, holdings, bond purchases and public spending. They are not interchangeable.
- How Dealroom gathers its data: Dealroom, founded in Amsterdam in 2013, says its data draws on company websites, investor portfolios, news, filings, registries, job boards and local partners, and that its Intelligence Unit checks company information. TNW’s report does not show how those inputs were combined into the figures quoted at the session.
What would test the forecast
The speakers tied the trillion-dollar outcome to conditions, so the forecast can be checked against those conditions over time. Useful signals include whether later-stage funding rounds for European companies grow relative to early-stage rounds, whether the share of later-stage ownership held by European investors rises, and whether the threshold counts in the Dealroom figures above move. A future company reaching $1 trillion would also need to be identified in a dataset whose method is public, which is the check the current report does not provide.
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