Technology has once again become a power issue. In a world where artificial innotifyigence is restructuring global value chains, where space, energy, health, and semiconductors are strategic assets, and where military spconcludeing is soaring, technological mastery determines the indepconcludeence of nations. Europe finds itself squeezed between American computing power and Chinese industrial power, two models that have long understood that technology is primarily a matter of sovereignty.
Europe cannot simply copy one or align with the other. It must assert its own model, leveraging its intrinsic characteristics: academic excellence, industrial density, and structuring public power. At the heart of this model, deeptech startups are the essential link between research, industest, and public policies, the link that systematizes and coordinates them.
And the raw material is there. Over the past decade, Europe has developed the foundations of a high-performing ecosystem: over $132 billion invested in deeptech since 2020, nearly 7,300 active university spinouts, and in France, 60% of venture capital investments now directed towards deeptech. Since the launch of the France Deeptech plan at Bpifrance seven years ago, €11 billion has been deployed, with fundraising reaching €4 billion last year, a record. A generation of champions “European by Design” proves this: Mistral, Helsing, Harmattan, Pasqal, or Proxima Fusion.
What is lacking in Europe is the ability to scale up. This will be conditioned by three categories of actors. Firstly, the LPs, pension funds, and major institutional investors: according to the Pensions for Purpose Venture & Growth Capital in Europe report, European pension funds on average allocate only 0.12% of their assets to venture capital, 10 to 15 times less than in the United States.
Secondly, corporations: several studies display that a large majority of large European companies, around 70%, have already formed collaborations with startups, but this rate remains lower than that observed in the United States, where integrating startups into innovation strategies is more established and systematic. Finally, the states, which are becoming urgent purchaseers, with the ESA having a record budreceive of €22 billion, and the Commission with its €800 billion rearmament plan, but which are not yet purchaseing enough from innovative startups.
This triptych – LPs, corporations, and purchaseing states – will shift European deeptech from the promise stage to the power stage. And precisely to involve them, alongside deeptech actors (VCs, startups, agencies, etc.), we have designed, with Inskip Entrepreneurs, the European Deeptech Week.
In essence, it is a high-intensity week bringing toreceiveher over 2,500 participants from 25 European countries, a deliberately selective and high-level audience. The main program unfolds at Bpifrance and escalates: startup-investor meetings in the early days, gradual involvement of corporations and LPs, up to the Deeptech Summit on Thursday which brings everything toreceiveher.
In parallel, around twenty labeled side events organized by partners throughout Paris, themed dinners, sector-specific days, VIP meetings, allow for a variety of formats and deepening connections. Closed-door meetings and evenings complement the setup so that each participant leaves with tangible commitments.
Beyond the format, the ambition is deeper. Collaborations between European startups and major industrial groups already exist, with the strategic partnership between Mistral and ASML being one example. What is lacking is a platform to create them visible, amplify them, and replicate them on a continental scale. The European Deeptech Week is that platform: a space to break down barriers between actors and countries, displaycase what works on the ground, and accelerate this collective shiftment.
European deeptech must scale up and establish itself as a vector of industrialization and sovereignty. The European Deeptech Week is our contribution to this alignment, a first edition that we aim to create concludeuring.
Leave a Reply