Estonia has Europe’s most AI startups per million people
Source：sifted.eu
From：Taiwan Trade Center, Warsaw
Update Time：2023/08/06
The UK may be Europe’s leading country for AI by the number of startups, but by a different measure, Estonia boasts the most AI startups per million people, according to the latest research.
Citing the VC firm Earlybird, European startup news portal Sifted reported that Estonia is known for its well-developed startup market. Despite having a population of only 1.3 million, Estonia has given birth to six unicorns — Skype, Wise (or TransferWise, as it used to be called), Pipedrive, Bolt, Playtech, and Veriff. Only Bolt has not yet publicly listed, been acquired, or moved its headquarters abroad.
In business, a unicorn is a privately held startup company valued at over US$1 billion.
In many cases, alumni of those earlier successes have become drivers of Estonia's startup ecosystem, founding new companies or becoming angel investors in the ambitious ideas of others.
Switzerland also punches above its weight when accounting for population, the site said. It boasts 67 AI startups including the smart data capture unicorn Scandit. The alpine nation has benefited from having one of Europe’s spinout capitals in ETH Zurich, which counts nine AI founders as alumni.
The UK is home to 334 startups in the AI space, Earlybird’s research showed. Across the Channel, Germany leads with 167 AI startups followed by France’s 135. Some of the best-funded AI startups in Europe include the Paris-based enterprise platform Dataiku. Bristol-based Graphcore, Belgian company Collibra, and Paris-based Shift Technology have all raised in excess of $500 million.
London has in its armory several unicorns in AI — the recently promoted Synthesia, the AI-powered software development firm Builder AI, insurtech Tractable, generative AI startup Stability AI and financial analytics startup Quantexa.
Source: https://sifted.eu/articles/which-european-countries-have-the-most-ai-startups