60% of new unicorns created over the last 12 months are GenAI native, according to a new report highlighting how generative AI has spearheaded the economic recovery of the tech ecosystem in Europe and the globe.

In fact, venture capital investment in tech in Europe has now reached pre-covid levels, according to the data from Accel, with AI driving the largest private rounds and fuelling innovation across multiple tech applications.

The AI-boom is even behind tech’s newest super unicorn Nvidia, which is now worth $1.1 trillion thanks to the increased need for its AI-capable microchips.

Large foundation models were found to take the largest private financing rounds of 2023 so far, with OpenAI ($10B), Anthropic ($2B), and Inflection ($1.3B) raising the three highest amounts this year.

US rounds were still beating European financing rounds, however, despite two new European genAI unicorns – Synthesia and Stabiliy.ai – joining the blessing.

However, the EU and UK are beating the US in terms of total AI journal publications and citations, with 15% and 22% of the world total, respectively. The US, in contrast, only contributed to 10% and 15% of publications and citations, respectively.

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Europe also has a wide and deep AI talent pool, with Accel’s report citing the University of Edinburgh as a hub for AI innovation and talent, likely thanks to its dedicated AI Futures Institute. Other hubs included London, Oxford and Cambridge, but previous reports have found Edinburgh to be the most AI-ready city outside of London.

What’s Next?

Accel also identified some trends they predict will impact the global economy and tech sphere, with a heavy emphasis on AI advancements and their potential effects on the globe.

The emergence of specialised genAI applications, especially in terms of media creation, will likely proliferate as AI continues to see a boom. This will contribute to more and more organisations moving to genAI native tools and infrastructure to enable the seamless integration of the advancing technology.

Enterprises will see transformation on two main fronts, Accel predicts: in intelligent automation, and a transition to a modern data stack. These are set to increase efficiency by better directing human-lead efforts and work and harnessing the power of data stored effectively in the cloud.

The advances of cloud infrastructure and AI applications also lead to issues in cybersecurity, with Accel predicting that non-human identity, data, and analytics will be a new frontier cyber experts will have to reckon with to keep complex cloud systems secure.