Sifted: European chip startups raised €3.25 billion in funding this year, nearly four times last year's amount.

on November 12, based on Sifted's data, European chip startups have raised €3.25 billion through equity financing year-to-date in 2026, nearly four times the €827 million raised throughout 2025, marking the highest level recorded by Sifted.

This capital has primarily flowed to startups competing with NVIDIA in the inference segment. For example, UK-based photonic chipmaker Olix completed a $312 million Series B round in August at a $3.3 billion valuation, standing as Europe's largest chip financing to date. The company aims to reduce large model inference costs by using optical interconnects to replace traditional HBM and copper wiring.

Sifted noted that European chip financing had stagnated for an extended period, totaling just €827 million in 2025. As model deployment scales up and inference becomes a primary expenditure for cloud providers and enterprises, capital is now returning to the sector.