May 2026's top 10 European tech deals you need to know about

European tech activity in May 2026 was characterised by a decline in deal volume but a substantial increase in capital raised compared to April. The ecosystem recorded 258 funding deals and €10.5 billion raised, compared to 290 deals and €5.1 billion in April, reflecting an 11 per cent decrease in deal activity and a 106 per cent increase in total capital invested.

At the country level, the UK strengthened its position as Europe's leading funding hub. UK startups raised €7.9 billion in May, up from €1.9 billion in April, representing a more than fourfold increase driven by several large funding rounds.

Sector dynamics also shifted during the month. Cloud emerged as the leading sector with €3 billion raised, replacing cleantech, which led in April, highlighting changing investor priorities across the technology landscape.

Exit activity improved modestly in May, increasing from 35 exits in April to 39, suggesting a slight recovery in market liquidity after several weaker months.

Ben Gibson, Partner at AshGrove Capital, commented on the May numbers within the European tech investment landscape in our monthly report:

One of the most encouraging aspects of today's market is that investors remain willing to support businesses with strong fundamentals, even as capital becomes increasingly selective.

While AI continues to dominate the conversation, sustainable value growth will ultimately depend on more than access to compute or model development. As AI becomes increasingly ubiquitous, the market is beginning to distinguish between software that is merely enhanced by AI and software that is genuinely indispensable to customer operations. The businesses that endure are typically those that own proprietary data which compounds with usage, solve mission-critical problems and become deeply embedded in customer workflows.

For his more detailed review and more in-depth analyses of the European tech ecosystem, including industry and country performance, exit activities, and more, check out our May report.

Here are the 10 largest tech deals in Europe from May, accounting for 69.5 per cent of the month’s total funding.

1

Pure Data Centres (UK)

Amount raised: $2.7B

Pure DC is a digital infrastructure company that designs, builds, and operates hyperscale cloud and AI data centres across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

The company develops large-scale facilities for some of the world's largest technology firms, with more than 1GW of capacity either operational or under development. Pure DC focuses on delivering resilient, high-performance infrastructure while addressing challenges such as power availability, sustainability, and the growing demand for AI and cloud computing.

Pure DC secured $2.7 billion for European and Middle East expansion.

2

Isomorphic Labs (UK)

Amount raised: $2.1B

Isomorphic Labs is a London-based AI drug discovery company spun out of Google DeepMind.

Founded in 2021, the company uses advanced AI models, including technology built on AlphaFold, to accelerate the design and development of new medicines. Isomorphic Labs combines artificial intelligence, biology, and drug discovery expertise to identify promising drug candidates across multiple therapeutic areas, with the goal of improving the speed, efficiency, and success rate of pharmaceutical research and development.

Isomorphic Labs raised $2.1 billion in Series B funding to scale its AI drug discovery platform, expand its therapeutic pipeline, and advance AI-designed medicines toward clinical development.

3

Nscale (UK)

Amount raised: $790M

Nscale is an AI infrastructure company that builds and operates full-stack computing platforms for artificial intelligence.

The company provides GPU cloud services, AI data centres, and software infrastructure designed to support the training, deployment, and scaling of advanced AI systems. With operations across Europe and North America, Nscale focuses on delivering sovereign, high-performance, and energy-efficient AI infrastructure for enterprises, developers, and governments.

Nscale secured $790 million in financing to underscore its commitment to the Norwegian data centre.

4

Ebury (UK)

Amount raised: £550M

Ebury is a global fintech company that helps businesses manage international payments, foreign exchange, cash flow, and cross-border trade through a single platform.

Founded in 2009, the company provides payment, collection, currency risk management, and financing solutions to businesses operating internationally, supporting transactions in more than 140 currencies across 160 countries. Ebury serves thousands of companies worldwide through a network of offices across Europe, Asia, the Americas, and other international markets.

Ebury secured £550 million to support its growth strategy and further develop its global payments platform.

5

Recursive Superintelligence (UK)

Amount raised: $650M

Recursive is an AI research company developing self-improving artificial intelligence systems capable of autonomously improving their own performance and research processes.

Founded by leading researchers and engineers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta AI, Salesforce AI, and Uber AI, the company is pursuing recursive self-improvement as a path toward more capable AI systems.

Recursive emerged from stealth with $650 million in funding to scale its research, compute infrastructure, and development of AI systems designed to accelerate scientific discovery.

6

ElevenLabs (UK)

Amount raised: $550M

ElevenLabs is an AI audio company developing technology that enables natural, human-like speech generation and voice interactions.

Its platform offers tools for text-to-speech, voice cloning, dubbing, speech-to-text, and conversational AI, helping businesses, developers, creators, and publishers create and distribute audio content across multiple languages. Founded in 2022, the company focuses on making digital communication more accessible through advanced voice AI.

ElevenLabs expanded its Series D financing to more than $550 million, as it scaled its AI voice platform and expanded enterprise adoption of voice agents, dubbing, and conversational AI products.

7

Iceye (Finland)

Amount raised: €300M

ICEYE is a space and Earth observation company that operates the world's largest synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite constellation.

Founded in 2014, the company provides near real-time monitoring and geospatial intelligence for governments, defence organisations, insurers, and commercial customers. Its SAR technology can capture high-resolution imagery in all weather conditions, day or night, enabling applications ranging from disaster response and environmental monitoring to security and defence operations.

ICEYE secured a €300 million credit facility to scale sovereign satellite intelligence.

8

Focused Energy (Germany)

Amount raised: $240M

Focused Energy is a fusion energy company developing laser-driven nuclear fusion technology with the goal of delivering clean, abundant, and commercially viable energy.

Founded as a spin-out of the Technical University of Darmstadt, the company is building fusion power systems based on inertial confinement fusion, using high-powered lasers and proprietary fuel target technology. With operations in Germany and the United States, Focused Energy aims to commercialise fusion energy by translating decades of scientific research into scalable power generation infrastructure.

Focused Energy secured $240 million in funding to advance the development of its laser fusion technology, with most of the capital earmarked for expanding operations and infrastructure at the former RWE nuclear power plant site in Biblis, Germany.

9

Fractile (UK)

Amount raised: $220M

Fractile is a UK-based AI hardware company developing next-generation chips, systems, and software designed to accelerate AI inference.

Founded in 2022, the company is building in-memory computing technology that integrates memory and processing to reduce the cost, latency, and energy consumption of running large AI models. By rethinking the AI inference stack from silicon to software, Fractile aims to enable faster and more efficient deployment of advanced AI systems at data centre scale.

Fractile raised $220 million to tackle the growing inference bottleneck.

10

QuantWare (Netherlands)

Amount raised: €152M

QuantWare is a quantum computing company developing scalable quantum processors and hardware infrastructure designed to accelerate the path toward large-scale quantum computers.

The company provides superconducting quantum processing units (QPUs) and related technology to research institutions, governments, and commercial organisations worldwide. Through its proprietary VIO architecture, QuantWare aims to address the scalability challenges facing quantum computing and enable the development of more powerful quantum systems.

QuantWare secured €152 million to scale its quantum processor technology, expand manufacturing capacity, and support the commercial deployment of large-scale quantum computing systems.

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