Europe leads the innovation rankings but captures just 9.9 percent of venture capital
Europe leads the Global Innovation Index 2026 from the World Intellectual Property Organization, holding six of the ten top places with Switzerland first for a sixteenth consecutive year, yet it accounts for only 9.9 percent of global venture capital deal value in 2026, based on the first two quarters. Northern America takes 72.6 percent and Asia 15.9 percent.
Europe's record describes ideas that start well in the laboratory and stall before global scale. The World Intellectual Property Organization frames the central difficulty as turning research strength into fast-growing firms and scaleup finance. Barcelona-based Kembara's 750 million euro first close for a planned one billion euro DeepTech fund shows capital arriving, yet such sums stay small beside 454 billion euros of global deal value in 2025.
Source: EU-Startups · October 2, 2026