91 private AI companies · valuations as of September 2026
Europe's most valuable AI startup would rank 13th in America.
Mistral AI is worth $24.4B. 12 American AI startups are worth more, and Anthropic alone is worth about 6 times all 32 EU AI unicorns combined.
We ranked every private AI startup we could verify in the European Union valued at $1B or more against every one in the United States valued at $4.5B or more, using the latest priced round for each and a source for every figure.
Mistral AI, Paris. The most valuable private AI startup in the EU.
Where Mistral AI would rank among American AI startups. 12 are worth more.
AI startups valued at $10B or more, United States against European Union.
The top 32 US AI startups against all 32 EU ones: $2.63T vs $159B.
1 · The ranking
Two European names in the top 24
Private AI startups in the US and the EU merged into one list and ranked by their latest valuation. Bars stop at $100B; the 3 companies past it are cut short and carry their full value.
Post-money valuation from each company’s latest closed round. Download this chart (PNG)
2 · Rank for rank
At every position, the American company is worth more
Each row pairs the US and EU startups at the same rank. Both sides use the same scale as the ranking above.
Only the top 15 are drawn. The pattern holds at all 32 matched ranks: by #15 it is $20B against $3.6B.
3 · What they build
America builds the AI stack. Europe builds drones.
Each region’s combined value split by what the companies make. Shares are of value, not of company count.
United States 59 companies · $2.79T
European Union 32 companies · $159B
Company counts, US then EU: frontier models 7 and 4, compute & infra 18 and 3, defense & autonomy 6 and 5, robotics 4 and 2, applications 24 and 18. The US figure is dominated by Anthropic and OpenAI, which sit in frontier models.
compute and infrastructure companies: chips, GPU clouds, inference and data. 18 of the 59 US startups build the stack everyone else runs on. 3 of the 32 EU ones do.
of EU value sits in defense and autonomy: Helsing, Quantum Systems, Tekever, Stark Defence, and Harmattan AI. In the US the same category is 4%.
4 · Built elsewhere
Europe’s founders, other people’s addresses
Well-known AI companies with European roots, and where they land in this ranking.
| Company | European roots | Based today | In this report |
|---|---|---|---|
| ElevenLabs | Polish founders | New York and London | Counted in the US ranking: New York is one of its two headquarters. |
| Poolside | Paris office | San Francisco | Not ranked: headquartered in the US, and its last valuation is unconfirmed. Source |
| Cast AI | Lithuanian founders, Vilnius engineering | Miami | Not ranked: US-based, and at about $1B, below the US cutoff of $4.5B. Source |
| Hugging Face | French founders | New York | Not ranked: Nvidia agreed to acquire it in September 2026. Source |
| Aleph Alpha | Heidelberg, Germany | Heidelberg, Germany | Not ranked: signed a definitive agreement in September 2026 to combine with Canada's Cohere, a deal first announced in April. Source |
How we did this
- Source
- Latest reported valuations from company announcements and press coverage, including Bloomberg, CNBC and TechCrunch, checked against the Crunchbase Unicorn Board for completeness. Every figure and its source link is in the CSV. Compiled on 30 September 2026.
- European Union
- The 27 member states. The UK, Switzerland and Norway are not EU members and are left out, which removes Synthesia, Wayve, Isomorphic Labs, Nscale and others.
- Headquarters
- Where the company is headquartered today, not where its founders come from or where it is incorporated. A company with two headquarters counts where one of them is: ElevenLabs lists New York and London, so it counts for the US. When both headquarters could count, the company counts where it was founded, which puts Collibra (Brussels and New York) in the EU. Wonderful was founded by an Israeli team and is headquartered in Amsterdam, so it counts for the EU.
- Who is in
- Private, independent and operating. Companies that have listed, merged or agreed to be acquired are out: xAI and Cursor (now part of SpaceX), Waymo (majority-owned by Alphabet), Cerebras and Bending Spoons (listed), Hugging Face (Nvidia), World Labs (AMD) and Aleph Alpha (Cohere). Holding companies are out too, such as OpenAI’s deployment company and Thrive Holdings (which buys accounting and IT firms to run them with AI).
- AI company
- AI is the core product. 30 companies where AI is central but not the whole business, such as Databricks, Anduril, Celonis and Contentsquare, are kept and marked with an asterisk. That includes every company whose product is autonomous hardware, such as drones: Quantum Systems, Tekever, Stark Defence and Zipline. Companies that use AI inside a different product are left out: Oura (smart rings), Neko Health (body scans), IFS and Odoo (ERP software), Alan (health insurance), Pennylane (accounting), GoStudent (tutoring), Notion (workspace software), Aiven (cloud databases), Verkada and Flock Safety (security cameras), Chaos Industries (counter-drone radar), ICEYE (radar satellites) and Automation Anywhere (process automation). So are developer platforms that grow on AI demand without selling AI themselves: Supabase, Vercel and ClickHouse.
- Valuation
- The post-money valuation of the latest closed round or reported tender offer. Rounds reported as in talks or still open do not count, however advanced, which understates several companies, including Perplexity, Thinking Machines Lab and Legora, and leaves out Multiverse Computing, whose Series C at a $1.7B pre-money valuation had not closed. Euro rounds are converted at the rate around the round date. Two figures are our own arithmetic from a confirmed pre-money valuation plus the amount raised: Reflection AI and AMI Labs.
- Old figures
- 25 companies have not priced a round in the twelve months to September 2026. They keep their last figure. The ranking underlines the value and its date, and the share image prints the date beside it.
- Floors
- 7 EU companies are reported only as valued above $1B. They are listed at $1B, which understates them.
- List length
- The US list is every US AI startup we could verify at $4.5B or more, 59 in all; below that the US has too many to rank with confidence. The EU list is every EU AI startup we could verify at $1B or more, 32 in all. Like-for-like totals use the top 32 on each side.
- Known limits
- A private valuation is set by the last investors to buy in, not by a market, and it moves in steps. Some wire-service reports could not be read directly, so a few figures rest on matching reports from other outlets.
The rankings, valuations and a source link for every company are available as a CSV, under a CC BY 4.0 licence. Reuse it freely, with a link back to this page.
How to cite this
Trayo Research. “Europe's most valuable AI startup would rank 13th in America.” September 2026. https://www.trayo.ai/research/us-vs-eu-ai-startups
Charts and figures may be reproduced or redrawn with attribution. If you would like a cut of the data we have not published, email [email protected] .
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