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Pitchbook, an investment monitoring platform, has reported that a record number of venture capital (VC) partners and firms within the European market were valued at over €1 billion in 2020, thereby reaching unicorn status. This follows a decade of sustained growth and multi-billion valuations flooding the European VC market in 2020, despite economic and social disruption by COVID-19.

In a note the World Nano Foundation (WNF) sent to Financial Nigeria last week, the not-for-profit membership organisation working on international commercialisation of nanoscale technologies said the report by Pitchbook backs early-stage VCs for long-term growth, as all four quartiles in 2020 outperformed 2019, with COVID-19's impact enhancing the appeal of specific sectors such as emerging tech.
 
The WNF said disruptive tech-based start-ups also built on their valuations and maintained growth while rapidly evolving new angel and seed start-ups secured capital from investors seeking the next big opportunity, and that an increased variety of start-ups attracted non-traditional investors (NTI) in larger numbers too, with NTI deal sizes expected to continue rising this year.
 
The report by Pitchbook notes subdued VC-backed exit values at the start of 2020. However, WNF said many companies have since been exiting at loftier valuations, with the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors being the catalyst for that growth, notching a record $28.5 billion of capital across 1,073 deals, representing the most significant year-on-year increase to date at 60.5%.
 
"Early-stage investors aware of the knowledge and expertise within emerging tech start-ups, and notably healthcare, will benefit most from the current environment. The pharmaceutical and biotechnology markets show there is still an appetite for late-stage investment too,” said World Nano Foundation co-founder Paul Sheedy.

Sheedy is a general partner in the Luxembourg-based Vector Innovation Fund, which recently launched a sub-fund raising an initial $300 million for pandemic protection and future healthcare, focusing on precision medicine, advanced point of care, and AI technologies that support sustainable healthcare, the global economy, and human longevity.
 
He said COVID-19 exposed our pandemic vulnerability and the weakness of our global healthcare systems, so investment must continue to grow to deliver the technological advances needed to avoid being caught out again.