Group update

For Europe to become a true home for trillion-dollar companies, speed and ambition are essential. The ingredients are already here — world-class talent, creativity, and a market of scale. What is needed now is decisive leadership, greater cooperation, and a shared urgency to turn that potential into reality.

In November, at Prosus Luminate London 2025, we convened over 200 of Europe's leading CEOs, entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers, and innovators to tackle one critical question: How can Europe build the next generation of trillion-dollar tech companies?

We created Luminate to amplify the conversations that many of us are already having about Europe's competitiveness and its ability to innovate. Europe has no shortage of ingenuity—from AI to quantum computing—our ideas are world-class, but building global outcomes demands ambition in policy, investment, and risk-taking.

Off the back of the event, we’re pleased to share a report including a summary of the day’s conversations. Within, we identify five critical barriers to Europe’s ambition (summarised below). We also provide 10 key recommendations to help stimulate a brighter, more ambitious tech future for Europe.

Europe Needs to Get Its Mojo Back: Speed and ambition at every level

With abundant talent and capital, Europe must shift from risk-aversion to bold innovation. European champions like Spotify, Klarna, Revolut have reset expectations on what can be achieved, but Europe should now aim for its first trillion-dollar company. To succeed, Europe must foster pride in innovation, pursue equity over debt, and accelerate its ambition.

Show Me the Money: Unlock pension fund investment to fill the funding gap

Europe’s entrepreneurs struggle with limited venture capital, while US markets offer larger investments, better exits, and educated investors. Despite $3 trillion of available pension assets, the region allocates only 0.12 per cent to venture capital and isn’t doing enough to back innovation. Further, only 6% of global private funding for AI start-ups goes to European companies. While reforms and pension fund initiatives, like the UK’s Mansion House Compact, show promise, growth capital access remains a challenge and Europe must do more.

AI Is the Building Block of Growth: Build homegrown tech as a vector of power

Europe’s economic future hinges on AI adoption, balancing commercial and strategic sovereignty. Over-reliance on US and Chinese tech risks democracy and diversity. Europe boasts AI strengths, especially in defense and biotech. Investments in infrastructure, defense spending, and collaboration across policy and markets are pivotal in fostering sovereignty and enhancing Europe’s competitive edge.

Retaining Talent Is Key: Europe’s academic institutions are world-class

Europe risks losing talent to the US, with founders attracted by easier hiring, ambitious peers, and faster sales. However, Europe boasts world-class universities, affordable skilled talent, and excellent research output, especially in AI. As the US tightens availability of visas, and growing political uncertainty, the time to retain and attract global talent has never been stronger. This is a moment of opportunity for Europe.

How to Stop Leading in Regulation: It's time to focus on execution

European tech faces challenges of regulation, complexity, and incremental policymaking. Streamlining stock options, labour laws, and taxation is critical for global competitiveness. Europe’s progress on antitrust, the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act are bright spots. Yet the next step is critical: building an integrated single market that speeds up execution and enables scale-ups to sell across an EU market of 450 million people.

Right now, Europe stands at a defining moment. We possess extraordinary talent, the world’s largest single market, and a heritage of innovation. But Europe must be a global technology leader to safeguard its position. To achieve this, we must act with unprecedented urgency — we need champions who advocate for European success and leaders who deliver tangible results.

At Prosus, we will continue to turn the concepts we explored at Luminate into impactful actions, and we are confident that, together, we can accomplish even greater things.