The Blink Edition No. 4

The European private markets briefing you can't afford to miss. Deals, signals, and moves, decoded every Monday by SeedBlink.

European venture is having its best year since 2022. Half of that sentence is true.

PitchBook's fresh Q2 report puts deal value at €44 billion for the first half of 2026, on pace for a 27% increase over last year. But look at what's underneath: AI now accounts for over 60% of every euro invested, up from 38% just last year. Mega-rounds of €100M+ make up more than half of all capital deployed, from less than 2% of deals. The recovery is real. It's also remarkably narrow.

I've been through enough cycles to know that markets leaning this hard on one story tend to be fragile. Concentration feels like strength on the way up. It's what hurts most on the way down. We've seen this before, with different labels on the box.

None of this is an argument against AI. We're backing it too, and Europe still has real runway there. But a market this dependent on a single story deserves a closer look, and that's exactly what we're here to do.

The most striking number in PitchBook's fresh Q2 European Venture Report isn't the €44 billion headline. It's the split underneath: AI now takes 60.2% of European deal value, up from 37.8% last year, with €100M+ rounds accounting for over half of all capital from just 1.8% of deals.

So what do we do with that reality? Three things, in our view.

First, treat the headline recovery as conditional. A market where half the money moves through 2% of deals hasn't broadened, it has narrowed. The €44 billion first half is real, but its foundation is a handful of very large bets on a single story. If sentiment around that story shifts, the correction won't be contained to AI. Repricing rarely respects sector boundaries. Position accordingly: this is a moment for discipline on entry valuations, not momentum.

Second, don't mistake capital inflows for structural progress. As the European Central Bank keeps flagging, Europe still lacks the deep institutional capital to fund scale-ups across sectors. AI money doesn't fix that plumbing, it just makes the pipes look busier. The test of this cycle isn't how much flows in during the boom, but whether the infrastructure holds when it slows.

Third, look where the crowd isn't. Buried in the same report is what we'd argue is its most underrated signal: emerging fund managers captured over half of new capital raised for the first time since 2020. Read that against the deal-level concentration and you get a quietly contrarian picture: while capital deployment narrows toward a handful of mega-bets, capital formation is doing the opposite, spreading toward new firms, new theses, and new geographies. LPs are effectively backing tomorrow's diversification even as today's deals concentrate. Add cleantech growing 59% this year and life sciences driving exits, and the parts of the market nobody's headlining are compounding in plain sight.  

Concentration creates the risk. It also creates the discount on everything else.
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UNTOLD is coming to SeedBlink

One of Europe's leading music festivals is opening its doors to investors. UNTOLD launched in Cluj-Napoca in 2015 and has grown into a global brand: 10 editions to date, around 427,000 attendees over four days at the most recent one, and a #3 ranking among festivals worldwide by DJ Mag in both 2024 and 2025.

And the story is no longer just about Cluj. From Bucharest to Dubai, and soon beyond Europe, the brand is becoming a global one, with a profitable festival at its core.

The upcoming round will give investors the opportunity to support UNTOLD's growth and international expansion.

Stay tuned. The public round is opening soon on SeedBlink.
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Switzerland 🇨🇭
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SWISSto12 raises €61M Series C

Swiss satellite maker SWISSto12 closed €61M to scale manufacturing, backed by rare fundamentals for spacetech: €121M in 2025 revenue, over $500M in contracted orders, and a 110% compound annual growth rate since 2022.

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Netherlands 🇳🇱
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Monumental secures $32M Series B
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Amsterdam-based Monumental raised $32M led by Khosla Ventures for its fleet of 150+ autonomous bricklaying robots, with a model where contractors pay for completed walls, not machines, turning robotics into a subcontractor.

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France 🇫🇷

Syntetica raises €26.1M Series A‍

Paris-based Syntetica raised €26.1M, with lululemon and MAS Holdings joining, to industrialise a process that recycles both major nylon types at once, in a market where recycled nylon still covers just 2% of demand.

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Investing beyond seed: Maria Koletsou on syndicate investing in the AI era - Part Two
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Part two of our conversation with Blossom Ventures' founder, this time on why liquidity, not access, will define the next era of angel investing. On staying in the winners through pro-rata, follow-ons, and secondaries, and recycling capital fast enough to catch the AI wave.

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An AI agent startup just let its agent run its $100M fundraise
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Lyzr didn't just build AI agents, it used one to help raise its own $100M funding round, handling investor questions, drafting memos, and analyzing engagement throughout the process. A fascinating glimpse into how AI is starting to reshape one of venture capital's most human-driven processes.

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OTB Ventures on Europe's deeptech awakening‍

OTB Ventures' Adam Niewiński shares why Europe's next wave of global winners will come from deeptech, AI, space, and defence, and what still holds the region back from competing with the US. An insightful read on technological sovereignty, venture investing, and where Europe's biggest opportunities lie over the next decade.

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