Both of the Scaleup Europe Fund's disclosed investments are deep tech: ICEYE's Series F in August, and Mistral's €3 billion Series D on 8 September at a post-money valuation above €21 billion. Jörn "Joe" Menninger asks what that buys Europe — and why, across the wider evidence, European deep-tech companies keep their laboratories at home while their parent companies move to Delaware.

Full article, links, and sources:

Read the full episode notes on Startuprad.io

Why this matters for deep tech: Deep tech is the sharpest case of the pattern this episode measures, because the research is the least portable thing a company owns. In the European Investment Bank's interviews every relocating company kept its technical and research and development capability inside the European Union — and moved the holding company, the commercial organisation and usually a founder. For a quantum, space, robotics or AI-infrastructure company, that is the difference between where the science happens and who ends up owning it.

In this episode, we cover:

  • Mistral's €3 billion Series D — Samsung Electronics leading, the EQT-managed Scaleup Europe Fund and PSG Equity as co-leads, and why the fund's ticket size is still undisclosed
  • ICEYE's Series F: a €1 billion round of which €450 million was primary capital, at a valuation the parties put above €10 billion
  • The Scaleup Europe Fund's mandate — Series B onward, €100 million tickets, across AI, quantum computing, dual use, clean energy, space, biotech and medical innovation
  • HappyRobot, formed out of the Technical University of Munich in Garching and incorporated in Delaware on 30 May 2023, as the worked case
  • Why EU scale-ups have raised 50% less capital than their San Francisco peers by year ten, and why 82% of EU scale-up deals carry a foreign lead or sole investor
  • The exit-tax problem on transferring intellectual property out of Germany, France or the Netherlands — and why it argues for incorporating abroad early

The European Scale-Up Question — all parts:

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