Europe Launched Its Largest-Ever VC Fund to Bolster Emerging Tech

While you were talking ship memes and shrimp tails, Europe was making big moves in emerging tech funding.

Europe formally launched its largest-ever VC fund: a $3.5 billion one run by the European Innovation Council. The ultimate goal: get in on still-emerging technologies like AI, blockchain, and quantum computing.

• Also part of the mission? Help guide European tech startups through their two main “valleys of death,” as Bloomberg reports: 1) taking lab research commercial, and 2) growing higher-risk deep tech startups.

Plus: EV maker Arrival SPAC’d yesterday and became the largest UK company listing in history, now worth over $13 billion. And Paris is getting its first blank-check company for tech investments, set to start trading in May. Earlier this month, the UK proposed loosening restrictions on SPACs to encourage growth in innovation.

• All of this is a step forward for European SPACs, the total number of which we could count on two hands.

Bottom line: Europe is upping its risk tolerance in hopes of a Silicon Valley-sized reward.