The cumulative value of active European unicorns is now €447.4 billion, up 3% from 2023, according to a new report from PitchBook.
The report also revealed that unicorn deal value continues to show signs of recovery in the second quarter of 2024, jumping from €1 billion in the first quarter to €2.4 billion in the second quarter.
Continued valuation growth in 2024 implies a full-year increase of 12.3% from 2023.
The number of deals is also on the rise: there have already been 28 unicorn deals in the first half of the year, compared to 39 in all of 2023.
Interim deal size was €98.7 million, with AI accounting for the largest round, including funding rounds from machine translation startup DeepL and Stable Diffusion maker Stability AI.
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There are currently 141 unicorns in Europe, with eight new companies joining the list so far in 2024. The majority of them (87) operate in the IT sector, followed by financial services with 16 and the B2B market with 15.
Across the startup ecosystem, early-stage median deal size will see the strongest growth, increasing by 43.9% to €1.8 million in the first half of 2024. The median early-stage valuation also increased to €17.3 million (up 17.3% from 2023).
The pre-seed stage continues to be the most resilient part of the market in terms of valuations, while later-stage valuations have seen a modest decline.
By sector, fintech deal size and valuation continue to lead other industries, followed by SaaS, AI and machine learning.
