European Tech's share of global venture capital funding: 18%

Data platform company Crunchbase has released its latest global VC funding report now that 2021 is over and done with. Evidently, records were shattered across the board, with funding for tech companies on track to exceed $630 billion worldwide for the year, nearly double the amount invested in 2020.

But we wouldn't be Tech.eu if we didn't zoom in on Crunchbase's numbers for Europe.

According to the market intelligence company, funding to European startups grew by more than 150% year-over-year, with more than $110 billion invested for the year.

That makes the tally about 18% of venture capital invested in startups globally.

I asked the Crunchbase team to put that into perspective for me by sharing the percentage totals for the previous years as well, and they came through nicely: it was 14% and 13% in 2019 and 2020, respectively. Or in chart form:

So there you have it, folks. Not only is the amount of money flowing into European tech startups and scale-ups growing rapidly, the region's total share on a global level also rose 5 percentage points in the span of only a year.

That, of course, means the vast majority of VC funding (i.e. approximately 82%) is still happening elsewhere in the world, though. It's growing faster elsewhere, too, with close to $20 billion in venture capital going to Latin American startups in 2021, which translates to 300% year-over-year growth according to Crunchbase.

As for unicorn count, Crunchbase says there are currently 150 private companies in Europe worth $1 billion or more, with 84 of those arriving to the scene in 2021.

For comparison's sake, there are a total of 1,148 private unicorns in the world at the moment, still acccording to Crunchbase, and 2021 welcomed 586 new entrants (yup, more than half) to the club.

You can - and should - go digest the full report here.