Press Kit: The European AI Index 2026

The European AI Index 2026 ranks the 15 largest private artificial-intelligence companies headquartered in Europe (EU, EEA, UK and Switzerland) by confirmed valuation. It was first published on 14 May 2026 and updated on 7 October 2026. The dataset is published by Built in EU, an independent directory of European technology alternatives.

The Index requires both the legal top entity and the declared headquarters to be in Europe. Companies that operate from Europe but whose top entity is incorporated in Delaware or elsewhere outside Europe are excluded from the headline figures and listed separately in an "operationally European, legally American" sidebar. Affected companies in 2026 include Lovable, ElevenLabs, Hugging Face, Black Forest Labs and Poolside, with a combined valuation of $35.05B not represented in the headline number.

The 15 companies are valued at a combined $123.67B. OpenAI alone was valued at $852.00B in its March 2026 round. The Index covers 5 European countries; Germany leads by combined value with 5 companies, followed by the United Kingdom (6) and France (2). Defence AI accounts for 5 of the 15 entries.

All data is published under a CC BY 4.0 licence with downloadable CSV and JSON files. Each row links its original sources and states its valuation date and legal entity. On 7 October 2026 every row was re-verified; each correction is logged on the corrections page.

Inclusion is restricted to private companies (no public listings, not acquired, not a subsidiary), with AI as the primary product (AI infrastructure counts), whose legal top entity and declared headquarters are both in the EU, EEA, UK or Switzerland. Companies whose top entity is incorporated outside Europe, or that declare a global headquarters outside Europe, are excluded from the headline ranking even if their operational base is European. Only confirmed, closed primary rounds set a value; rounds in talks, open rounds and secondary sales do not. Each row links its original sources, drawn from company funding announcements, lead investors, financial press (Reuters, Financial Times, Bloomberg, CNBC, TechCrunch, Sifted) and company registries. Valuations that are stale or rest on reporting rather than a company statement are flagged in the row notes. All figures are USD-denominated; EUR valuations are converted at the ECB reference rate of 6 October 2026 (1 EUR = 1.1269 USD). Full methodology and source citations are on the Index page.