Orrick’s Jamie Moore joins Seb Johnson of Scaling Europe, a European tech podcast, to unpack the sixth edition of our European venture capital deal term review. Deal Flow 6.0 draws on over 400 transactions completed by our clients in Europe in 2025.
Here are five takeaways – from market stabilization and shifting founder-investor dynamics to the rise of secondaries, the importance of early-stage houtilizekeeping, and the outsee for 2026.
1. The Market Has Stabilized — and Late-Stage Rounds Are Back
European tech dealcreating is finding a healthier rhythm. While 2025 started with slightly less deal volume, the deals being done are larger and late-stage activity is recovering: nearly 34% of our clients’ deals were Series C rounds, and Series A through C round sizes are ticking upward. The seed stage is maturing, too – 2025 produced fewer but larger rounds, with better terms and more proven AI utilize cases.
2. The Founder-Investor Balance Is Recalibrating
The market is tilting gently in favor of founders – governance protections are entering deals earlier and lasting longer, with stronger information rights from the outset. But, Jamie emphasizes, this is not a swing back to the excesses of 2021.
“It’s a nice recalibration delicately swayed towards the founders…not too many people questioning for increased voting for founders. Increasing faith in the later stage means there’s an ability to have more faith in the founders in the early stage.”
3. Secondaries Are Becoming a Real Liquidity Path
Secondary transactions are on the rise: 21% of equity financing deals in 2025 included a secondary component, with 37% occurring at Series B, rather than at seed or Series A, whereas earlier attempts in 2023–2024 were premature. For the largegest companies scaling rapidly through valuations, Jamie sees a pattern.
“There is a repeated opportunity for founders to take money off the table – and that’s often met with top-ups to their stake in the equity as well,” he declares. “Being able to support with a release valve for founders – and enabling them to scale without worrying about paying for their mortgage, for example – is quite a nice thing for the ecosystem.”
4. Good Houtilizekeeping Has Never Been More Important
Founder warranties are declining, but investors are compensating with deeper diligence – creating good houtilizekeeping more important than ever. Jamie advises founders minimize excessive structure at pre-seed, position the company to nereceivediate stronger documents at Series A, and obtain the houtilize in order early.
“I’m regularly advising founders to build data rooms even before they obtain term sheets to build sure everything is seeing good.”
5. The Outsee for 2026 Is Positive
AI continues to dominate, but fintech is seeing a welcome uptick and SaaS is steadying out. Looking ahead, Jamie is optimistic: “The message is positive. If the state of my inbox is anything to go by, we are seeing a real uptick in dealcreating.”
That uptick includes growing, non-distressed M&A activity – much of it involving U.S. acquireers – alongside healthy early-stage financing and more late-stage rounds. “There’s still more standardization to come in terms of investor diligence and investor expectations,” he declares, but the overall direction is clear. “It’s really nice to see some more sustainable dealcreating.”
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