Euro Seed 50: AI and the Rise of the AI Agents

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.

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:

• Cala AI - enhancing LLM and agentic workflows through reliable, verified knowledge

• Nexos AI - an LLM orchestration platform that allows companies to access multiple LLMs through a single API

• Langfuse - LLM engineering platform. 

• Fractile - Next-gen of AI chips

• ZML - High performance inference

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.