According to a recent study, Germany is in third place in the AI ecosystem with 218 financed start-ups in 2019. Great Britain (590 start-ups) is in first place, followed by France (234 start-ups) in second place. France (USD 1.3 billion) is out in front when it comes to financial investment. Next come Great Britain (USD 1.2 billion) and Israel (USD 902 million). Germany is in fourth place with around USD 510 million invested – the level of investment in Germany is almost double that of the level in 2018.

The financing of AI start-ups really started to gain momentum in 2014. At the time, a total of just USD 528 million was being invested in all the surveyed countries. Since then, growth rates have increased by more than 50 percent per year.

The study also proves that the European AI ecosystems are being heavily financed by domestic investors. Over the past year, 17.5 percent of AI investments in Great Britain were made by US investors, while 14 percent of investments in Germany came from the USA. Chinese investors, by contrast, have hardly had a role to play.

The study, “The road to AI – Investment dynamics in the European ecosystem”, was published by Roland Berger in collaboration with France Digitale, the largest association of start-ups in Europe, consisting of 1,400 digital start-ups and more than 100 investors. The 28 European Union member states (including Great Britain) were all surveyed, as well as Norway, Switzerland and Israel.

“Lots of developments are very pleasing as this shows that the European AI ecosystem is continuing to grow rapidly,” said Jochen Ditsche, partner of Roland Berger, commenting on the results. “But, in comparison to China and the USA, the European AI ecosystem is too heavily fragmented and suffers from insufficient integration.” Despite the strong growth, the necessary coordination between the individual countries is still lacking in Europe. Take GDPR, for example: differing interpretations mean it is something of a European patchwork quilt.”