In June we argued the gate on the AI build-out had moved from the chip to the electron: physical scarcity, not capital, was rationing the boom. For infrastructure that still holds. Step back up to the capital markets and the picture flips. Capital is superabundant. It is just moving through the narrowest funnel this industry has ever produced.

Crunchbase counts $510 billion of global venture funding in H1 2026, more than all of 2025 combined and the biggest half-year ever recorded. PitchBook-NVCA has US deal value at $412.7 billion in six months, above every previous full-year total. Exits woke up too: Q2 was one of the strongest quarters for venture-backed liquidity in years.

And then the other column. CB Insights has global deal count at its lowest level in more than a decade, new unicorn formation at a six-quarter low, and 263 mega-rounds taking 81% of all capital, with one company taking nearly 40% of a quarter on its own.

When the average and the median tell opposite stories, which one do you underwrite? The rest of this letter is our attempt at an answer, starting with what the record is actually made of, then following where the liquidity went.

Each month, we sit down with someone shaping our community to share their story, insights, and lessons learned, read this month's full conversation here.

Bridging Europe's Scale-Up Gap: How M&G Catalyst Is Redefining Impact Investing M&G, a leading international savings and investment business, manages over £371 billion globally on behalf of banks, pension funds, family offices, and sovereign wealth funds. Of this, Catalyst holds $1.5 billion in growth equity assets under management, focusing on growth-equity investments by providing scale-up capital for purpose-driven businesses. M&G has backed Borski Fund in 2025, aligning with the mission of founding partner Simone Brummelhuis - one of the European Women in VC founding members - to close the funding gap for women-led startups.

"Long-term saving pools are under-allocated, and that's a structural problem. Let's not make that mistake again, especially when the fundamentals are so strong." - Alex Seddon

How Invest-NL is tackling Europe's growth-stage "missing middle."

Jellie Banga, Chief Business Officer at Invest-NL, shares how the Dutch national promotional institution is backing scaling companies and 50+ VC funds, mobilising over €500M in private and public capital across climate tech, life sciences, agrifoods, and deeptech. One example: Invest-NL's Deep Tech Fund has backed Axelera AI with €35M in equity since 2024 a company that has since gone on to raise $250M+ in a round backed by BlackRock.

This is a strong example of how public capital can catalyse private investment to help European startups scale past Series B, instead of stalling out. Read on here….

We love to share success stories and spotlight the most inspiring people shaping the VC ecosystem.

Congratulations to Helen McBreen on joining the Board of Directors of the EIC! As one of our founding members at European Women in VC, Helen has been instrumental in shaping our community's mission to elevate women's leadership across the European venture ecosystem. Her appointment to the EIC Fund Board, bridging public and private capital to scale Europe's deep-tech ventures, is a fantastic recognition of the expertise and vision she brings as Partner at Atlantic Bridge.

Carolina Montagna is the CEO and Board Member of B Heroes one of Italy's most active seed-stage venture capital firms and a driving force behind a new model for how early-stage investing gets done. Under her leadership, B Heroes has evolved from a startup accelerator into a highly connected, community-driven investment platform, using live events, expert networks, and peer-driven insight to source and support breakout founders, rather than relying on capital alone.

Twenty years at Siemens, commercialising wind power services and additive manufacturing. Then, in 2020, a blank sheet: built the venture arm of a €39bn energy company from nothing. Kendra Rauschenberger runs Siemens Energy Ventures across four fronts, investing, building companies internally, ecosystem partnerships, and venture clienting, where a startup earns Siemens Energy as a paying customer before it earns a term sheet. Spin-outs seeded under her include MakerVerse, Factor2 Energy and Hymonic. She also built the Carbon13 Female Equity Scholarship for women climate-tech founders. GCV named her a Rising Star in 2022 and an Emerging Leader in 2024. Well done Kendra, you are a real role model!

Jennifer Moreland leads bp Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of energy major bp. She took the helm in early 2026, stepping up from bp's treasury leadership team to run a fund that has invested in 75 startups and deployed $1.2bn in capital since 2007.

Judith Dada is leaving her general partner seat at Visionaries Club to become co-CEO of Berlin AI startup Langdock, telling Sifted she hopes the investor-to-operator move will start a trend among European VCs. It is a rare direction of travel, and exactly the kind of operator fluency the vertical-AI wave rewards. Readers of our June letter will remember her as the person who pointed us to the Europe 2031 scenario.

Here's what's new across the VC ecosystem this month, the funds, the deals, and the shifts worth knowing about.

Our Member Climentum Capital launched Fund II at €60M! It's fantastic to see the thesis they backed from day one, climate hard tech as the backbone of a secure, resilient, and competitive Europe validated so clearly by where the continent has moved. Energy security and industrial resilience are strategic imperatives, and you saw that early.

Huge congratulations to Doerte Hirschberg, Dr. Jennifer Jacobs Dungs, Morten Halborg, Stefan Maard and the entire team for building something this strong, and to the anchor investors EIFO, European Investment Fund (EIF), and IDA, along with the wider syndicate for backing this vision. Wishing you continued success finding and scaling the hard tech companies that will define Europe's industrial future.

Congratulations to Michelle Robson and Alastair Mitchell from Odyssey Ventures on securing a fresh £10M commitment from the British Business Bank, made through its Regional Angels Programme, to invest alongside Odyssey's early-stage fund, Odyssey Discovery I. It is a $50M seed and pre-seed fund backing UK founders building at the intersection of AI and Deeptech, spanning applied AI and automation, energy and sustainable industry, and human and planetary health. The fund is now 50% closed, with a final close on track for after the summer. Well done Team!

This is a strong signal of institutional confidence in UK AI and Deeptech founders and in the kind of cross-border ambition needed to compete globally.

Huge congratulations to Norrsken Launcher team on closing their second fund at €80m, oversubscribed and closed within just a few months this spring! Launcher is part of the broader Norrsken ecosystem, founded by Niklas Adalberth, co-founder of Klarna. The ecosystem also includes Norrsken VC, Europe's largest early-stage generalist impact fund (closed at €320m in 2024), founded by Adalberth alongside Agate S. Freimane, Tove Larsson and David Frykman.

🔵 Meet the LP call with Maria Demenopoulou, Gizem Taser, Ehsan Haghighi, and Nadya Petrova from the European Investment Fund. We were joined by over 60 people! The session opened with a short introduction, after which attendees have chose or switched between three breakout rooms, each focused on a different topic:

🔵 WomenInvestEU event in Brussels in June spotlighted women and their allies driving change across the investment ecosystem, while highlighting best practices that supported the sustained growth of gender-conscious investing in Europe. It also showcased the key activities, products and outcomes delivered by the WomenINvestEU consortium over the past two years, developed in collaboration with the network of over 200 European investors across the supply chain committed to advancing gender-conscious investing. Kinga Stanisławska took the stage for “Reimagining a More Inclusive Investment Ecosystem Led by Women” panel, but also used the opportunity to talk to Merete Clausen, Maive Rute, Agnieszka Wojdyr and Caroline Bergaut.

🔵 TechBBQ, 26th-27th August, Copenhagen - discount code: EWVC25XY

🔵 Cambridge Future Technologies Forum, 29th September, Cambridge - (If EWVC members are interested, please email our Ambassador of Startup Community Viola Jardon on [email protected])

🔵 Our Friends at Ion Pacific invite us to join them for Secondaries & Cocktails Evening, 6th September, Paris - register here

🔵 Global Wealth Management Summit, 4th-5th November, London - (Discount code contact us)

🔵 SuperReturn Europe, 3rd-6th November, Amsterdam - 10% discount code: FKR3673EWVC or click here.

🔵 SuperReturn Secondaries North America, 17th-18th November, New York City - 10% discount code: FKR3675EWVC or click here.

🔵Meet the LP and AMA Sessions with: Seedcamp, Aurum, Thema VC and AQVC, you can apply for an invitation here.