Accel 2025 Globalscape: Race for compute

Back in 2016, it was clear that traction in Europe's cloud ecosystem had started accelerating. Crystallizing this momentum, the Accel team launched Euroscape, an in-depth report on the European and Israeli cloud ecosystem that examined key trends and included a list of the top cloud / SaaS startups to watch across the region.

As AI redefines the way applications and software will be written and drives a new industrial revolution globally, Euroscape has now evolved into Globalscape. Today, recognizing the report's wider scope, we've added a new list of 100 US cloud and AI startups to watch. While Europe, Israel and the US are the key regions covered in the report, the Accel team aspires to expand the regions covered in the report in the future. This report was co-authored with my colleagues Tim Rawlinson, Bilal Mobarik, Lucy Wimmer, George Pike, Josh Fang and Christine Esserman. It was released today at Web Summit in Lisbon and you can access the full report here.

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AI is driving unprecedented tech leadership concentration

AI's tectonic platform shift remains seemingly unstoppable, pushing the Nasdaq to all-time highs, offsetting geopolitical turbulence and macro uncertainties, and creating the world's first $5 trillion company (Nvidia). This platform shift is also creating one of the largest tech leadership concentrations ever seen, with the exponential rise of the "Super Six" - Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta. These organizations now represent around half of the Nasdaq Composite Index. The operating cash flow that the Super Six generate per year ($0.6 trillion for 2024) continues to strengthen their dominance as they are among the few companies able to sustain the level of investment required to maintain AI leadership. And the market is recognizing their success, with their combined market cap increasing by more than $4.9 trillion this year.

Software isn't going anywhere

Beyond AI models and infrastructure, it is a mixed story for the $100 billion+ cloud giants. Companies such as CrowdStrike, IBM, Oracle, Palantir, Palo Alto Networks, and Shopify are starting to benefit from AI, while the success of others like Salesforce and ServiceNow is closely tied to a wider adoption of agentic automation in the enterprise.

Overall, however, the outlook looks positive for the software landscape. Our Globalscape Public Cloud Index has grown 25% year-over-year, and the tech IPO market has started to reopen, with companies such as Circle, Figma, and Netskope climbing above their listing price. As agentic adoption reaches the inflection part of the S-curve over the coming years, there is likely to be a resurgence of the cloud giants as they leverage their existing platforms to deploy and orchestrate new agentic workflows.

The new world of AI native applications fuels record funding levels

While existing software companies are investing heavily in new agentic capabilities, a new breed of AI native applications is showing unprecedented growth. The financing of these new applications, combined with the financing of AI models, is pushing U.S., European, and Israeli venture cloud and AI investment to an all-time high. In 2025, funding across these regions is expected to hit $184 billion- an increase of almost 80% over 2024 funding levels.

While the lion's share of 2025's funding has been driven by huge raises for OpenAI ($47B), Anthropic ($19B) and xAI ($15B), it is a different picture for the application layer as the playing field has leveled across the US, Europe and Israel.

This year, European and Israeli-founded cloud and AI application companies have attracted $30B of investment, which is two thirds of the funding of their US peers. This is an increase of more than a third (36%) over 2024. In addition, emerging winners in each geography are raising similarly sized rounds.

Notable global champions have emerged from across Europe and Israel, including Cyera (Tel Aviv), ElevenLabs (London), Helsing (Munich), Lovable (Stockholm), n8n (Berlin), and Synthesia (London). This is clear evidence that the region's AI talent pool continues to shine and its founders have the grit and ambition to build global category-defining companies.

The race for compute

The massive growth of AI native applications combined with the expected acceleration of agentic deployment in enterprises is driving a frenetic race to build a massive AI infrastructure. Current estimates reveal the need to build 117GW of new AI data center capacity by 2030- enough to power the UK, Italy, and Spain. This translates into around $4 trillion of capital expenditure required in the next five years.

While $4 trillion is a huge number, it's smaller than the $5.5 trillion of combined projected operating cash flows of hyperscalers Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft and Amazon over the same period (2026 - 2030).

Around $3.1 trillion of revenues would be required to pay back these investments over the next five years (2026-2030). Again, this is a large number, but it is only the equivalent of 1-2% increase in the global annual GDP growth rate for the next five years. If the adoption of AI can create this uplift in global productivity, it should be enough to close the funding gap (See full report for details behind these numbers).

Accel 2025 Globalscape

Congratulations to the 100 European and Israeli, and 100 U.S. cloud and AI companies that have made the 2025 Accel Globalscape list, and to the new unicorns that have graduated from last year's cohort. It's exciting to see the level of innovation happening across the regions. You can see the full list and more in the report here.

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The Accel team couldn't be more excited by the new AI industrial revolution we're experiencing and the opportunities that lie ahead across so many sectors. From vertical applications to robotics, healthcare and life sciences, quantum computing, energy, defense, cybersecurity and beyond, every area of our lives will be transformed over the coming decade. We're taking an active part in this transformation, partnering with companies including Cursor, Cyera, Decagon, Ema, Gamma, H Company, Helsing, Lovable, n8n, Perplexity, Scale, Synthesia, Thinking Machine, Vercel, and many others.

We've deployed over $13 billion across 450+ AI and cloud companies over the last four decades and have been fortunate to partner with many exceptional cloud and AI founders globally. As the list above highlights, AI winners will come from anywhere, as we have seen for cloud companies previously: from Atlassian in Australia to UiPath in Romania, Celonis in Germany, Snyk in Israel, and Docusign and Crowdstrike in the U.S. We can't wait to see what the next decade will bring.

SLIDE 13 - Accel is investing in software & AI globally

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