State of Nordic venture, Q2 2026

This is the first edition of a quarterly note on the Nordic venture market. The league tables rank the most active investors in each region's deals in Q2 2026 by the number of deals they joined, led or not. Investors count wherever they're based, so the Nordic table includes the European Innovation Council and a US firm. When I call an investor Nordic, I mean it's headquartered there. A deal counts once for each ranked investor in it, so totals are participations, not distinct deals. The tables leave out investors below the cut-off, and late-reported deals can still raise Q2 counts.

State, EU and university investors did about half the deals

Figure 1. State, EU and university investors did about half of leaderboard deals in the Nordics and Europe, and almost none in the US. Share of each region's leaderboard deals done by state funds, EU programs and university vehicles, Q2 2026.

Almi Invest led the Nordic table with 15 deals. Among the other state, EU and university investors, EIFO and Chalmers Ventures did 8 each and the European Innovation Council 7. With ties, the top nine places hold 11 investors, and 7 of them are state, EU or university investors. Private venture firms did 44% of the Nordic table's deals, against 59% in the US, where accelerators and venture firms did nearly all the rest.

The Nordic bench is thin

Each table lists about 25 investors plus ties, so its length says little: 27 for the Nordics and 28 each for Europe and the US. The bar to get on is what differs. It took 3 deals to make the Nordic table, 9 for Europe's and 19 for the US's, and 14 of the 27 Nordic entries did exactly 3. Antler did 10, and Lifeline Ventures, Validé and Wave Ventures did 6 each. Andreessen Horowitz, 12th with 4, was the only US investor on the table.

The Nordic top ten took part in 76 deals combined, against 265 for Europe's and 508 for the US's. The most active US investor did 79 on its own. Three investors tie for ninth with 5 deals each, which doesn't change the Nordic total. These totals show how deep each table runs, not how busy each market is for its size, since ten investors cover more of a small market.

One round put most Nordic investors on Europe's value table

Figure 2. Nordic investors show up most on Europe's VC deal-value table. Share of ranked investors on each European table that are headquartered in the Nordics, Q2 2026.

Eight of the 37 investors on Europe's VC deal-value table are Nordic: EQT, Wallenberg Investments, AMF, SEB, Swedbank Robur, Scania Growth Capital, Altor and PostScriptum. Five of them (Wallenberg Investments, AMF, Swedbank Robur, Scania Growth Capital and Altor) sit in the 13-way tie at exactly $1.6B, along with non-Nordic investors such as Kobe Steel and Hy24. All seven invested in Stegra's €1.4B round, which closed on June 24 (Stegra). Stegra is building a green steel plant in Boden, in northern Sweden, so most of the Nordic showing on this table is one industrial project. Above the tie, only 3 of 24 investors are Nordic: PostScriptum, EQT and SEB.

The tie also shows how the table counts value. Thirteen identical totals only make sense if every investor is credited with the whole round, so the table measures rounds joined, not money invested.

In private equity, Axcel was the second most active investor in Europe, with 25 deals. The Nordic PE top ten did 26% as many deals as the US PE top ten, against 15% for VC.

Few Nordic investors show up on the exit side: only 2 of the 108 on Europe's VC exit table, Tesi and SynerLeap. Stockholm-based Legora made 3 acquisitions of VC-backed companies, tied for eighth among acquirers worldwide.

Deal terms moved toward startups over the year

These figures come from PitchBook's VC Dealmaking Indicator, where a lower score means a more startup-friendly market. PitchBook doesn't split it by region, but it charts the indicator in its US Venture Monitor, which covers only US-headquartered companies, so I read it as US data. It runs through August 31, 2026, so Q3 covers only July and August.

The early-stage indicator was 42 in Q2 2026, down from 68 a year earlier. It peaked at 98 at the end of 2023 and has fallen every quarter since. Startups sought slightly less capital than investors supplied, a ratio of 0.98, down from 1.7. By company count, demand was 4.6 times supply.

Not every term moved toward startups. Cumulative dividends appeared in 22% of early rounds, up from 7% a year earlier. Participating preferred has almost disappeared from early rounds, at 6% against 44% at the start of 2010. The median early round valued the company at 2.5x its previous post-money valuation, up from 2.0x, and sold 19% of it, against 27% at the start of 2010.

Late stage is tougher for startups than early stage, but it eased too: the late-stage indicator fell to 64 from 77. Capital demand was 2.1 times supply, down from 2.6, and cumulative dividends appeared in 11% of late-stage rounds, down from 25%. Late-stage companies still waited 2.1 years between rounds, unchanged, against 1.3 years at early stage.

The partial Q3 figures put the early-stage indicator at 39 and the late-stage indicator flat at 64. By company count, early-stage demand rose to 5.4 times supply, the highest since the series began in 2010. Cumulative dividends appeared in 30% of late-stage rounds, up from 11% in Q2, and in 45% of venture-growth rounds, up from 9%.

What this means

What to watch in Q3

How sure I am about each claim