The 409 AI startups of Europe
Asgard Capital (asgard.vc) just published an overview of 409 AI startups in Europe (31st July). It’s pretty good stuff.
They started with 715 self-proclaimed AI-startups, but thinned that list down to 60% eliminating agencies, only closed-betas and companies with no actual Machine Learning.
I checked another overview of European AI startups by tech.eu, which listed 618 AI startups in January 2017. It looks like there are at least 100 companies on both lists, but some companies with significant funding did not make it on the Asgard list, e.g. Alteryx, Kreditech, Darktrace each with >100 mil. $ funding.
So, it looks like the Asgard list is likely more “pure ML/AI” focused. That’s good to know. Today many pitch-deck/websites seem full of machine learning and “predictive analysis” without the tech or people to back it up.
Use cases for AI
I am most interested in the applications of “AI”, which they grouped by a mix of functions, industry and technology:
Who would have thought: data analytics takes first place. Since much of Machine Learning could be classified as a “data analysis technique” I am not surprised.
I checked the full CVS list of 409 startups (get it here directly from Asgard) and yes — it turns out there is a broad set of industries addressed in the category data-analytics. Examples:
- http://lumoa.me/ — Online platform for customer experience management
- http://teqmine.com/ — Database and data mining technologies for the science and medical industries
- http://www2.heuritech.com/ — Enables fashion brands to find relevant trends related to products
I think Marketing & Sales (place #2) and Health & Medicine (place #3) are more interesting results. The startups grouped in these categories are addressing specific problems of their function / industry.
“Making more money” (Marketing & Sales) is always a good business case and with more health-data available (think Fitbit, altough apparently going broke) and the advances in image recognition (think radiology) it seems that Health and Medicine are ready for true advances powered-by AI.
I recently reviewed the top 100 startups 2017 from this years Y-Combinator class. There were 11 relevant AI-startups, all from the US: 2 focusing on sales, 3 on customer support and six in other categories (incl. health and data analytics).
This mix is a bit different from the European AI landscape. Maybe there is a different focus in Europe, but it could also be, that we need to catch up on some topics (e.g. customer support).
It will be interesting to see how the “group-distribution” changes over time as Machine Learning/AI becomes relevant for more and more industries / functions.
Top ten funded AI startups in Europe
If you just starting to look into AI startups, why don’t you start with this list of the top 10 — funded startups in Europe.
My wish list for the next Asgard article:
- The current Asgard-Definition for AI. What makes a startup “AI” or not in their eyes today. It seems to me that “simple” machine learning / neural networks or NLP doesn’t cut it for them. Some Berlin-startups (which I know) using “basic ML” are missing from the list.
- Evidence for their conclusion that the AI industry is growing. I don’t doubt that assessment, but there is no data over time. It would be interesting to see, whether some Hubs grow faster/slower than others (Brexit anyone?)
Materials used:
- The 409 European AI startup list by Asgard — here (with e-mail registration)
- The 619 AI European startup list by a former TechStars alumni — here
- The original (German only) blog article by Fabian Westerheide — here
- The asgard.vc article in english — not available at time of publishing — here
- My article “The world’s best accelerator’s top >100 startups of 2017” — here
Logic for “quick comparison” between the two lists
I performed an extremely rough check to compare the data-sets. I checked for a match in startup-name (vlookup only) and sorted the list by funding-size from the tech.eu list. Likely there are some matches I missed.
Let me know some of your thoughts in the comments! Did I miss anything regarding these startups? Also click the little heart ♥ if you like this article and would like to continue reading more articles like this in the future. Thank you! :)
