PitchBook: the number of European VC deals with US investor participation rose from 359 deals totaling €2.7B in 2011 to 1,434 deals worth €50.8B so far in 2021
- Veteran investor Alex Ferrara, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, which backed companies like LinkedIn and Pinterest … Source: PitchBook . Tweets: @alexferrara , @sam_l_shead , and @ryan_browne_ Source: PitchBook : European Venture Report Tweets: Alex Ferrara / @alexferrara : The rumors are true! My family has moved to London to focus 110% on early stage Europe SaaS investing. I'm joining my colleague @GroovyyDhruvy. Also, I'm apparently now considered a “veteran investor”.😬🤫 https://www.cnbc.com/... Sam Shead / @sam_l_shead : NEW: US VCs are continuing to move in on Europe after several start-ups like Hopin and Klarna saw their valuations soar. Bessemer has sent one of its top VCs from New York to London, while General Catalyst and Lightspeed have beefed up teams in the city https://www.cnbc.com/... Ryan Browne / @ryan_browne_ : From Bessemer to General Catalyst, America's biggest VC firms are expanding into Europe to capitalise on the continent's booming startup scene. https://www.cnbc.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
US capital's role in European venture has been building for years: Atomico flagged a record $34.3B year for European startups in 2019 with about $10B coming from US-based VCs, and CB Insights counted $93.3B flowing into European tech in 2021 across 7,051 deals. PitchBook's new numbers quantify the mechanism behind that surge — US participation has gone from 359 deals (€2.7B) in 2011 to 1,434 deals (€50.8B) so far in 2021.
The physical footprint is following the money: Bessemer is moving partner Alex Ferrara from New York to London to focus on early-stage Europe SaaS alongside colleague Dhruv Grover, while General Catalyst and Lightspeed are also beefing up London teams. The later record confirms the pattern held — by 2024, almost two-thirds of European VC funding came from abroad.
First-order effects
- European SaaS founders now face a deeper bench of US term sheets: Bessemer, General Catalyst, and Lightspeed are all competing locally out of London rather than flying in from the US, raising deal competition and valuations at early stages.
Second-order effects
- Established European funds must respond to US firms staffing up on their home turf — either scaling fund sizes to match US cheque sizes or ceding the largest rounds, which pushes more of Europe's biggest financings onto foreign balance sheets.
Third-order effects
- If reliance keeps compounding, European venture structurally depends on foreign LPs and US investors to finance its winners — a dependency the corpus already shows maturing into 2024-2026 data, alongside the absence of any European company built from scratch to €100B+ market cap in three decades.
The trend: European venture is consolidating around US-led capital, with American firms shifting from occasional cross-border checks to permanent London operations that anchor the continent's deal flow.