Following the numbers, it’s clear Europe has not been ground central for the AI startup investment boom. Nonetheless, European tech hubs are still seeing a not-insignificant slice of the funding pie.

Investment totals got a big boost this week with Paris-based Mistral AI — an OpenAI and Anthropic competitor — putting the final touches on a massive round of approximately $487 million. The Andreessen Horowitz-led financing would reportedly value the company at $2 billion.

The round puts Mistral AI into the top slot for the most heavily funded European generative AI startups. However, it’s far from the only company in the region securing a sizable sum of venture capital.

Using Crunchbase data, we curated a list of 16 companies that raised funding in recent quarters. In areas from text-to-video synthesis to fraud detection, the companies listed below have collectively pulled in over a billion dollars to date.

Other members of the European AI unicorn club

After Mistral, the next-highest fundraiser on our list is Synthesia, a London-based developer of AI-enabled software that purports to “turn your text into video in minutes.” The 6-year-old company picked up $90 million in a June Series C financing led by Accel at a reported $1 billion valuation.

Synthesia, despite its pitch, doesn’t appear to be aiming for the Hollywood market. Rather, the company is focused on tools for businesses that want to easily and inexpensively put together training sessions, sales presentations and other content that can be engagingly packaged using an AI-generated avatar.

London-based Stability AI was another venture capitalist favorite last year when it picked up $101 million at a reported $1 billion valuation. The company has been using the funding to develop open-source sound- and image-generating systems like Stable Audio and Stable Diffusion XL.

More recently, however, Stability found itself back in the news, as it was reported the company has explored selling itself as management faces pressure from investors due to its finances. Stability just raised $50 million from Intel last month.

Other activity

Beyond the unicorn crowd, another sizable fundraiser is IDVerse, which applies generative AI in identity verification and fraud detection. The London-based company has raised $45 million to date in Series A and B funding.

Meanwhile Diffblue, out of Oxford, has secured $36 million to date for AI tools that can help coders do their work more quickly and accurately. And Haiper, which is working on AI-based content creation tools, landed $13.8 million in a March financing.

All in all, Europe’s tallies don’t add up to anything close to what we’re seeing on this side of the Atlantic. In the U.S., a single company — OpenAI — has raised multiples more than all European AI startups combined.

Perhaps, however, Mistral AI’s giant fundraise is a harbinger of more to come.

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Illustration: Dom Guzman