Marathon VC: Total funds raised by Greek startups in 2023 to $1.1 billion
2023 was not an easy year for the global startup scene and in general for the tech industry. The high interest rates and the general unfavorable macroeconomic climate made it difficult to access to new funds. So investments in startups internationally decreased by 35% compared to 2022, while investments in startups in Europe decreased by 38%. However, even under these difficult conditions, the Greek ecosystem of innovation and technology showed signs of resilience.
The funding levels in Greece in 2023 may have reduced by 24.5%, but this reduction is clearly smaller than the one observed pan-European. The total funds “raised” by the startups with Greek founders reached 1.1 billion dollars. Of course, it is not a record amount, but it is close enough to the trends of previous years. For example, the corresponding amount in 2019 was 962 million dollars, while in 2020 it was 1.2 billion dollars.
This specific number “sounds” huge since Marathon VC calculates funding for startups with Greek founders without having any direct relationship with Greece. For example, the corresponding report of Found.Ation, which measures startups with a Greek VAT number, states that the total amount of funding reaches 485 million euros.
On the other hand, the funding rounds raised by startups based in Greece, reached 64, while they moved more or less at the same levels as in 2022 (65) and 2021 (61). It is worth mentioning that there was a significant increase in post seed funding for startups that have the center of business activities in Greece. In particular, we saw a total of 27 funding rounds take place, while we had a new Series A funding record (19 rounds). This fact shows the maturity that the domestic ecosystem has achieved, as well as its ever-increasing impact on foreign markets.
Trust in Greek startups by the technological giants
Furthermore, some of the world’s strongest technology companies continued to invest in Greek startups. For example, we saw Google and Nvidia invest in Runway, Iconiq in Causaly, Lightspeed and Coatue in Endor Labs, Intel Capital in TileDB, Carlyle in Hack The Box, 83North to Orbem, and many other similar investments.
At the same time, last year saw many and important acquisitions. Certainly one of the biggest success stories of 2023 was the acquisition of Augmenta by CNH Industrial for $110 million. It is worth mentioning that this is the third largest exit in the history of the Greek startup scene. First place belongs to Instashop, which in 2020 was acquired by Delivery Hero for 360 million dollars, while in second place is Softomotive, which was acquired in 2020 by Microsoft.
Other acquisitions noted within 2023 were that of Code BGP from Cisco, Marinetraffic from Kpler, DeepSea from Nabtesco, Arrikto from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, iSize from Sony Interactive Entertainment, as well as many others.
In general, it is undeniable that the Greek ecosystem has made tremendous progress in recent years. It started as a small community of founders and today it has evolved into a market, which in the past 5 years has attracted more than 10 billion dollars in capital in more than 700 funding rounds, while recorded more than 100 acquisitions.
See the detailed report of Marathon VC here.