It suggests that European tech firms are pulling in far larger sums of money per investment than in previous years, defying the economic uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic, which provided a big boost to online services.
"When there's a big transformational change in society, it's quite often the time that you get the the emergence of a lot of new start-ups. We are particularly excited for this opportunity." Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Klarna, said the U.K. leads Europe when it comes to tech policy, and that there are a number of issues that need to be addressed before the European Union can produce tech giants of its own.
Siemiatkowski highlighted EU regulation of web cookies as an example of "poor regulation," given the multitude of consent messages users receive when they visit various websites. "It's driving us to become more complacent and less worried about privacy rather than the opposite," he said.