AI investment surge: The 10 biggest deals in Europe in 2024

The year 2023 will be remembered as the year of recognizing the potential of Artificial Intelligence. As a result, investor interest in the sector surged, and lawmakers also focused on regulatory controls. In the same year, the European AI companies raised €2.1 billion over 141 deals.

The trend of investing in AI companies continued in 2024. As stated in the Tech.eu report “European Tech 2024: The big picture” European AI companies raised nearly €3 billion through 137 deals, which is about 35% more than the year before.

French companies took the top spot in terms of countries, securing over €1.3 billion across 14 deals (almost half of all AI investments in Europe in 2024). German companies followed in second place with €910.3 million raised over 23 deals, while the UK ranked third with €318.1 million raised over 33 deals.

The sector will likely see further innovations and a broader range of AI-driven solutions as regulatory frameworks evolve, fueling even more investments and deals in the coming year.

Here are the 10 biggest deals in European AI companies in 2024.

10. Gcore (Luxembourg)
Amount raised in 2024: $60M

Gcore is a global provider of cloud, edge, and AI solutions, offering a comprehensive suite of services designed to accelerate AI training, enhance content delivery, and protect servers and applications.

With a network spanning over 180 points of presence worldwide, Gcore delivers high-performance infrastructure tailored to meet the diverse needs of businesses across various industries.

By leveraging Gcore's solutions, businesses can achieve enhanced scalability, security, and performance, driving growth and success in the digital era.

In 2024, the company raised $60 million, which will be strategically invested in enhancing Gcore's technology and platform, including the development of AI servers powered by NVIDIA GPUs, to fuel AI-driven innovations.

9. Parloa (Germany)
Amount raised in 2024: €61.7M

Parloa is an AI Agent Management Platform that enhances contact centres by automating customer interactions through advanced AI agents. 

Their platform enables businesses to design, integrate, and manage AI agents capable of engaging in natural, personalized conversations across multiple channels, including phone, chat, and messaging applications. 

Parloa's solutions seamlessly integrate with existing business infrastructures, ensuring scalability and reliability for enterprises seeking to elevate their customer support operations. 

The company secured €61.7 million in Series B funding to scale and enhance its AI-powered customer service platform.

8. Stability AI (UK)
Amount raised in 2024: $80M

Stability AI is open-source generative AI company dedicated to unlocking humanity's potential through advanced artificial intelligence. Their suite of models spans various modalities, including image, video, audio, 3D, and language, making AI accessible to everyone, everywhere.

Their flagship product, Stable Diffusion, is a deep learning, text-to-image model that generates detailed images based on text descriptions. It can also perform tasks such as inpainting, outpainting, and image-to-image translations guided by text prompts. Stable Diffusion is open-source and can run on most consumer hardware equipped with a modest GPU, marking a departure from previous proprietary text-to-image models.

Stability AI's mission is to activate humanity's potential through generative AI, providing open models in every modality for everyone, everywhere.

In June 2024, Stability secured approximately $80 million in funding, delivering a crucial capital boost to the company renowned for its image generation platform, Stable Diffusion.

7. ElevenLabs (UK)
Amount raised in 2024: $80M

ElevenLabs is a pioneering AI audio research and deployment company dedicated to making content universally accessible in any language and voice. With cutting-edge AI models that generate realistic, versatile, and contextually-aware speech and sound across 32 languages, ElevenLabs serves a diverse range of users, from everyday creators to businesses.

Their technology powers various applications, including voicing audiobooks and news articles, animating video game characters, supporting film pre-production, localizing media, and creating dynamic audio for social media and advertising. It also plays a vital role in accessibility, restoring voices to those who have lost them and aiding individuals with specific needs.

Committed to ethical innovation, ElevenLabs ensures its AI tools are developed and deployed with safety at the forefront, fostering positive and creative uses that shape the future of digital interaction.

In 2024, the company secured an $80 million Series B funding round to reinforce its position as a leader in voice AI.

6. Magic.dev (Austria)
Amount raised in 2024: $117M

Magic.dev, a startup with European origins, envisions scaling natural language processing into computer programming environments. Registered as a public benefit corporation, the company harbors even more ambitious long-term goals: the development of a "superhuman" general AI capable of achieving the elusive third phase of automation, where algorithms can grasp and perform virtually any intellectual task.

With the widespread attention generated by OpenAI's ChatGPT and its advancements in generative language models, natural language processing appears to be an ideal foundation for Magic.dev's aspirations.

The company is focusing on engineering, product development, and go-to-market strategies, with the goal of enhancing productivity and efficiency in software development.

In 2024, the company raised $117 million through a Series B funding round to further advance its AI system designed for automating software development.

5. H (France)
Amount raised in 2024: $220M

H Company is an AI startup specializing in developing "agentic" artificial intelligence solutions designed to perform complex tasks autonomously. The company focuses on creating advanced AI agents capable of reasoning, planning, and executing multi-step processes across various applications, including robotic process automation (RPA), quality assurance, and business process outsourcing.

In November 2024, H Company launched its first product, Runner H, an AI web agent that automates web-based tasks through natural language commands, streamlining workflows for developers and businesses. Runner H leverages proprietary compact language models to deliver efficient and cost-effective automation solutions.

Despite early challenges, including the departure of three co-founders in August 2024, H Company has continued to innovate and expand its offerings in the AI sector. The company secured a significant seed funding round of $220 million, reflecting strong investor confidence in its vision and technological capabilities. 

4. DeepL (Germany)
Amount raised in 2024: $300M

DeepL is a leading AI company specializing in neural machine translation. 

Founded in 2017, DeepL has developed the DeepL Translator, a service renowned for its high-quality translations across multiple languages. Utilizing advanced neural networks, DeepL's technology delivers nuanced and accurate translations, often surpassing competitors in both quality and speed. 

The company offers a range of products, including DeepL Pro for professional use, which provides API access and enhanced features for businesses and developers. DeepL is committed to continuous innovation in the field of AI language processing, aiming to break down language barriers and facilitate global communication. 

After securing a unicorn status in 2023, DeepL received $300 million investment at a $2 billion valuation in 2024. Additionally, in October last year, the company announced its continued momentum and investment in the US with the opening of its first US Tech Hub in New York City.

3. Poolside (France)
Amount raised in 2024: $400M

Poolside AI is a Paris-based company specializing in advanced artificial intelligence solutions for software engineering. The company focuses on developing foundation models tailored to the complexities of modern software development, enabling businesses to fine-tune these models with their codebases, documentation, and knowledge bases. This approach results in proprietary AI models that continuously learn and adapt to specific development practices, enhancing efficiency and productivity.

The company's solutions are deployable within a client's infrastructure, ensuring that data and code remain within secure boundaries—a crucial feature for industries with stringent security requirements, such as financial services, defence, and technology sectors.

In June 2024, the company closed $400 million investment round which was jointly led by Bain Capital Ventures and DST.

2. Helsing (Germany)
Amount raised in 2024: €450M

Helsing AI is a European defence technology company specializing in artificial intelligence solutions to enhance the capabilities of democratic nations' defence systems. The company focuses on integrating advanced AI into existing and new hardware platforms across sea, air, and land domains.

The company's mission is to achieve technological leadership that enables democratic societies to make sovereign decisions while upholding ethical standards. Helsing emphasizes the thoughtful and ethical development of AI technologies to strengthen defence capabilities, ensuring that democracies can deter and protect against external threats.

The company is committed to maintaining high ethical standards in AI development, focusing on serving democratic societies and ensuring that the deployment of its technologies aligns with democratic values. Helsing actively engages in public debates and contributes to international guidelines on ethical AI in defence.

The company has secured significant funding to support its growth and innovation in the defence AI sector.

After €209 million raise in 2023, the company secured an additional €450 million Series C in July 2024, which brought the company’s funding to over $760 million.

1. Mistral AI (France)
Amount raised in 2024: €600M

Mistral AI  is a leading artificial intelligence company specializing in open and portable generative AI solutions for developers and businesses. Founded in April 2023, the company focuses on creating open-weight large language models (LLMs) that users can customize and deploy across various environments.

The company's mission is to make frontier AI ubiquitous by providing tailor-made AI solutions to builders. This commitment to open, portable, and customizable solutions drives Mistral AI to deliver advanced technology efficiently.

In a short period, Mistral AI has achieved significant milestones, including raising substantial funding and releasing several AI language models. Their flagship model, Mistral Large, offers top-tier reasoning capabilities in multiple languages, delivering exceptional value and low latency.

After €490 million raised in 2023, the company continued its expansion in 2024. In march, Databricks invests in Mistral AI, integrating Mistral AI’s models into its platform. A couple of months later, the company raised a €600 million round for its bid to rival industry leader OpenAI.