An analysis of the Euro Seed 50 tells you a lot about where technology trends are heading and it can be no surprise that AI dominates. Whereas in previous years, a list like this would have seen companies spread across fintech, health tech, SaaS or climate tech, more than 90% of this year’s Euro Seed 50 are either AI native or have AI at the core of their offering. Within this, we see a clear trend towards AI agents serving vertical industries, as well as the infrastructure to support them.
AI agents, built on top of LLMs, are changing the nature of work, able to execute decision logic and automate workflows. Early successful examples include software development with tools like Cursor and Lovable which have seen explosive growth. The Euro Seed 50 points to a large number of startups in Europe building specialised agents for vertical use cases.
Seed 50 Vertical Agents
Underpinning this trend of vertical agents is the rising number of agent infrastructure tools which are also well represented in this year’s Euro Seed 50. These include:
ACI.dev - An open-source infrastructure layer for AI agent tool access
Fern Labs - Building infrastructure to allow teams of agents to collaborate
Portia - AI Agent SDKs
Lightpanda - Building the ‘Chrome’ for machines, a headless browser for automation and AI
Strawberry Browser - Build agents in a browser
Linkup - Search tool for AI applications
Another important AI trend emerging from the Euro Seed 50 is companies improving the performance, efficiency and usability of Large Language Models - LLM optimization. Companies featured include:
Fintech has historically been Europe’s bright spot with many of Europe’s leading technology companies emerging from this sector including the likes of Klarna, Trade Republic, Adyen, Revolut, Monzo etc.
One pure play fintech featured in the Euro Seed 50 is Polar which recently announced a $10m seed round and provides an open source monetization platform for developers.
There is plenty of innovation, however, when it comes to AI in financial services. AI roll-ups is an area to watch with 2 companies featured in the Euro Seed 50:
Aries Global - acquiring sticky SaaS companies, centralizing GTM and product infrastructure and applying AI.
Integral - bringing AI to accounting firms.