EU wants to invest 70 billion in startups – so they don’t all move to the USA

With this investment program, the EU development bank aims to enable startups to grow and scale in Europe, as many are drawn to the United States.

The European Investment Bank (EIB Group) plans to invest tens of billions in innovative and fast-growing young tech companies to keep them in Europe. €70 billion will be made available for such startups and scaleups by 2027.

“Scaleups” are companies that are experiencing rapid growth after their founding (“startup”) and have established a functioning business model.

The Board of Governors of the development bank, which is made up of EU finance ministers, plans to give the launch signal for a corresponding program called TechEU at a meeting in Luxembourg on Friday.

With this package, the EIB Group also aims to encourage private and public investors to participate in projects. According to the EIB Group, a total of EUR 250 billion could then be mobilized for the European technology sector.

Support will be provided to companies active in the fields of clean technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) , health, security and defense technologies, digital infrastructure and critical raw materials.

"The program aims to ensure that ideas, technologies, and companies born in the EU can grow and thrive in Europe," it said. The goal is to finance research projects and companies from the initial idea to the initial public offering.

In the interest of competitiveness, Brussels is currently trying to keep startups and scaleups on the continent.

They are essential for Europe's future. The European Commission recently presented a strategy for this and aims, among other things, to simplify regulations in areas such as insolvency, labor, and tax law.

According to the authority, more startups are founded in Europe than in the US. However, over the past 15 years, almost 30 percent of European " unicorn startups "—startups that are later valued at more than one billion US dollars—have relocated their headquarters to a non-EU country. According to the EIB, between 2008 and 2021, almost 30 percent of unicorn startups left Europe. Most relocated to the US.

One reason why it's more difficult in Europe to turn small startups into larger companies is, according to the report, money. While data shows that startups in the US received around $70.5 billion for their early stages in 2024, the figure in Europe was $16 billion—despite the fact that there are similar numbers of startups on both sides of the Atlantic.