Top 10 Tech Unicorn Companies

For a long time, the United States has been the birthplace of many start-ups innovating and developing new technologies to support people and businesses. Now, there is rising interest among investors in fast-growing European tech start-up companies. This rising interest is boosting valuations thus leading to an increasing number of tech unicorns.

According to investment analyst Dealroom by the middle of this year, American venture capital investors had already placed $10.1 billion into Europe’s startups. Considering the total for 2020 as a whole was $9.3 billion, there has been a significant increase in interest in European tech start-ups. With this increased interest we look at European tech unicorns and these companies are the top 10 European tech unicorns ranked by valuation.

10 - Trade Republic

Trade Republic is a mobile-only and commission-free broker that provides investment opportunities. Founded in Berlin, Germany, the fintech company is valued at $5.3 billion. The Trade Republic app provides a fast, mobile account opening, intuitive search and filter functions, a personal timeline. The company’s three founders, Thomas Pischke, Christian Hecker and Marco Cancelloeri met in 2015 and set out to build an investing experience they would want to recommend to their friends. From then until 2019 the trio built the core of Trade Republic in a backyard in the heart of Berlin. Now, the company are a German securities trading bank supervised by the Federal Bank of Germany and BaFin.

9 - Hopin

Valued at $5.65 billion, Hopin offers an all-in-one event management platform that makes planning, producing and reliving event experiences simple and easy. Founded in London and launched in 2019, Hopin’s aim was to give organisers the ability to create the in-person event experience as closely as possible. It wanted to do this in an online capacity so customers can make meaningful interactions and network remotely. As of January 2021, Hopin had hosted over 45,000 events. The company claim they are the first virtual venue for live online events. 

8 - Mollie

Mollie is a payments platform that offers an easy-to-implement process for integrating payments into a site or app. Based in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Mollie is valued at $6.5 billion and have four other locations across Europe. The company say it is a pioneer in the payment industry as well as being one of the fastest-growing payment processes within Europe. Mollie facilitate companies of all sizes to scale and grow by using different payment methods. By utilising simple and clear payment-APIs Mollie offers multiple payment methods in a uniform way. The company currently have nearly 100,000 customers and employ an international team of almost 300 professionals.

7 - Getir

Meaning ‘bring’ in Turkish, Getir is a Turkish company founded in 2015. The company has developed a mobile application that offers an on-demand, ultrafast delivery service for grocery items. As well as this it has a courier service for restaurant food deliveries. Since it was founded in 2015 Getir has expanded aggressively and doubled its orders in the second half of 2019 to reach almost 1.5 million in December of that year. In this year it generated $120 million from sales. In 2021, Getir acquired grocery app BLOK for an undisclosed amount. Currently, Getir serves Turkey, the United Kingdom, Amsterdam, Berlin and Paris.

6 - Rapyd

Rapyd is a payments platform that inserts fintech services into any app and simplifies the complex offering of local payment methods. It has built technology that removes the back-end complexities of cross-border commerce and provides local payments expertise. Its fintech-as-a-service platforms—Collect, Disburse, Wallet, and Issuing—seamlessly embed localised fintech and payments capabilities into customers applications in a simple way. Founded in 2016 by Arik Shtilman, Arkady Karpman and Omer Priel in London, the company is valued at $8.75 billion. In the five years since its founding Rapyd has acquired two organisations, in July 2021 it acquired Valitor for $100 million.

5 - Celonis

Founded in Munich, Germany, Celonis are the global leader in execution management. The Celonis Execution Management System, which the company launched in 2020, provides companies with a modern way to run their business processes entirely on data and intelligence. The company pioneered the process mining category 10 years ago when it first developed the ability to automatically X-ray processes and find inefficiencies. Founded in 2011 and valued at $11 billion, Celonis have 1,300 employees and over 2,000 enterprise customer deployments across thousands of processes, systems and industries.

4 - Global Switch

Global Switch creates data centres that set new standards in scale, resilience and connectivity. The company owns and operates 13 data centres centrally located in Tier 1 cities across Europe and Asia-Pacific. This comes to a total offering of 428,00 sq m of technical space. Global Switch is one of the world’s highest credit rated data centre providers and has been valued at $11.1 billion. Founded in London and established in 1998, Global Switch continues to set the standard for efficient environments and clean energy solutions through its innovative design and operation.

3 - Checkout.com

Valued at $15 billion, Checkout.com is an API-based platform providing online payment solutions that improve the user's checkout experience. Checkout.com’s end-to-end platform has flexible tools, granular data and deep insights so customers can innovate, adapt their markers, create outstanding customer experiences and make smarter decisions faster. The company works with leading global brands such as Bloomingdales, Deliveroo and Klarna. Since it was founded in 2012, Checkout.com has grown to be a team that covers over 15 international offices and supports thousands of businesses around the world.

2 - Revolut

Revolut is a financial services company that specializes in mobile banking, card payments, money remittance, and foreign exchange. In 2015 Revolut launched in the UK and offered its customers money transfer and exchange. Now the company offers accounts featuring currency exchange, debit cards, virtual cards, Apple Pay, interest-bearing "vaults", commission-free stock trading, crypto, commodities, and other services. An $800 million funding round in July 2021 brought the value of the company to $33 billion, making it the most valuable UK tech startup in history.

1 - Klarna

Swedish Fintech company Klana provides online financial services such as payments for online storefronts and direct payments along with post-purchase payments. Klarna’s customers when making a purchase can choose to pay for their items in full 30 days after the purchase or its easy and transparent credit option allows you to spread the cost of your purchase over 6-36 months. Klarna is the leading global payments and shopping service. It provides smarter and more flexible shopping and purchase experiences to 90 million active consumers across more than 250,000 merchants in 17 countries.