Europe's startup landscape is changing fast. Scaleups are driving jobs and innovation across the EU, but which countries and industries are leading the growth race?
New companies in Europe are expanding rapidly, with scaleups in Latvia, Portugal, and Greece seeing the strongest performance between 2023 and 2024, growing the most in the EU, especially in employee numbers.
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On the other hand, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Estonia registered the biggest drops in the same time period, according to the latest data from the European Scaleup Institute (ESI).
A scaleup is a company that has passed its initial startup phase, successfully validated its business model, and entered a period of rapid and sustainable revenue growth.
These companies have existed for 10 years or less and are important because they drive innovation and employment.
In addition to companies' rate of growth, Ireland (415.3), Sweden (354.7), and Denmark (274.3) registered the highest number of scaleups per million population in the EU in 2024.
In contrast, Romania, Bulgaria, and Latvia had the lowest, according to the European Commission.
Which industries' scale-ups are performing best?
Although agriculture and fishing saw the biggest growth between 2023 and 2024, information and communication, support services, and electricity, gas and steam are the three top industries where scaleups are growing the most over five years, according to the ESI.
The electricity and gas industry registered the steepest upward trajectory between 2020 and 2024 due to the EU's energy transition.
Last year, the EU announced a €5 billion initiative designed to empower the continent's most innovative deep tech scaleups. However, the first investments are set to be made this autumn — an important task to make sure that new companies perform as well as possible and contribute positively to the economy, according to the OECD.
"Significant sums of public money are allocated to incubators for boosting startups and scaleups — a task vital for enhancing competitiveness, innovation, productivity and employment," the organisation said in a recent report.