The most well-funded startups in Europe. Who holds the top spot in Ukraine: infographic

Analytical service CB Insights has published an updated infographic of European startups that have raised the most funds. PDFfiler was named the leader in Ukraine, but according to AIN.UA calculations, another company should be the number one.

CB Insights ranks companies based on total disclosed equity funding and only considers VC-backed tech companies that have raised an equity round since 2015. During this time, startups from Europe managed to raise almost $117 billion in investments.

Who holds the top spot in Ukraine

As in 2020, the company airSlate (formerly known as PDFfiller) has been recognized as leading by investment amount in Ukraine. In 2019, it received $30 million in investments, and this is the figure that CB Insights has factored in the infographics. After the publication of the ranking, another $40 million round was reported. According to the company’s representatives, $80 million has been invested in airSlate overall.

However, AIN.UA estimates that the leader in terms of the number of investments in Ukraine is the startup GitLab. The company’s product is a DevOps collaboration platform, or, more precisely, a code repository management system for Git. In 2019 alone, the company raised $268 million in a Series E round and was valued at $2.7 billion. With this investment included, GitLab has raised a total of $426 million.

The second top-funded Ukrainian startup is Grammarly. In November 2019, the company raised $90 million. In total, Grammarly has secured $200 million of investments so far. According to TechCrunch, the company has officially become a unicorn – this information was confirmed to AIN.UA’s editors in Grammarly. More details about the company can be found here. And while GitLab has no development team here, Grammarly has a fairly big one.

Other results

• The top-funded startup in Europe is Sweden-based Klarna, which offers a “buy now, pay later” e-commerce solution. The company has raised nearly $1.8 billion.
• The top 3 most well-funded startups also include a UK-based food delivery service Deliveroo ($1.5B) and used car marketplace Auto1 Group in Germany ($961M).
• Eight of the 37 companies featured on the map are unicorns. Some of them operate in Ukraine: Bolt ($4.3B) and Glovo ($1B), Deezer ($1.4B).
• Collectively, the startups on the map have raised nearly $9B in disclosed equity funding.