Venture Capital

General Catalyst (Europe)

General Catalyst is a global venture capital firm that expanded aggressively into Europe through its London office. The firm invests across stages from seed to growth and has become one of the most active US-origin VCs in European tech, backing companies including Helsing, Parloa, Mistral AI, and PhysicsX.

General Catalyst focuses on AI, defense tech, enterprise software, and climate, and manages over $25 billion in total assets.

United KingdomLondonSeed to GrowthAIEnterprise SoftwareDefense Tech

Details

Location

London, United Kingdom

Category

Venture Capital

Stage

Seed to Growth

Profile

/united-kingdom/venture-capital/general-catalyst-europe

Portfolio startups

Startups this investor has backed

Helsing

Munich, Germany · Startup

Helsing is a defense technology company building AI software systems for democratic governments and armed forces in Europe. Its platform fuses data from radar, drones, optical and infrared sensors to provide real-time situational awareness and operational decision support. After major growth financing in 2025, Helsing expanded across core European defense programs and into autonomous systems, including the HX-2 platform.

StartupLate StageDefense TechAIGovTechComputer Vision

Parloa

Berlin, Germany · Startup

Parloa is the German champion of enterprise AI for customer service. While consumer chatbots attract headlines, Parloa has built the operating system for large contact centers, enabling non-technical teams to deploy AI agents that handle complex voice and chat interactions. Its platform is trusted by large European enterprises such as Allianz, Decathlon, and Swiss Life, and it focuses on governance, compliance, and integration with legacy systems rather than flashy demos. In January 2026, Parloa announced a $350M Series D led by General Catalyst, reportedly valuing the company at about $3B. The round validated its strategic shift from "chatbots" to "agent fleet management." Parloa does not just deploy a single bot; it manages and audits thousands of agents, ensuring they remain compliant, minimize hallucinations, and integrate cleanly with back-office systems such as SAP and Salesforce. This operational emphasis is why Parloa has become the default choice for risk-sensitive industries like insurance, retail, and financial services. Parloa's 2026 roadmap is "voice-first AI." The company has developed speech-to-speech models that reduce the latency and robotic cadence that make older IVR systems frustrating. Its agents can handle interruptions, use backchannel cues, and operate across regions with language and accent adaptation, which is critical for multinational contact centers. With fresh capital, Parloa is acquiring smaller AI boutiques to consolidate the European market and is building a significant presence in New York to serve Fortune 500 clients in North America. The company is deeply connected to the Berlin AI ecosystem, with ties to Merantix and the wider Berlin AI Campus, and it has a strategic relationship with Microsoft for Startups and Azure deployment. Its investor base includes General Catalyst, Altimeter Capital, EQT Ventures, Newion, and Senovo, giving it a mix of global growth capital and specialized SaaS expertise. In 2026, Parloa stands out as Europe's clearest enterprise AI winner in customer service: a scaled, governance-heavy platform that makes autonomous agents safe and effective inside the largest organizations.

StartupGrowthAICustomer ServiceEnterprise Software

Monzo

London, United Kingdom · Startup

Monzo is one of the UK's leading digital-only banks, offering a mobile-first current account with features like instant spending notifications, fee-free foreign spending, budgeting tools, and salary sorting. Founded in 2015, Monzo has grown to over 9 million customers and achieved profitability in 2024. The company holds a full UK banking license and has expanded into business accounts, lending, and investment products.

StartupLate StageFintechBanking

Similar entries

Matched by sector and location overlap; not a confirmed investment portfolio

11x

London, United Kingdom · Startup

11x is the breakout star of the UK's agentic AI wave, known for building "digital workers" that replace full job functions rather than merely assisting them. Founded in 2022 by Hasan Sukkar, the company frames its product as autonomous employees rather than software tools. That positioning is controversial, but it resonates with revenue teams seeking to eliminate manual drudgery and scale outreach without linear headcount growth. The flagship product, Alice, is an AI Sales Development Representative that can source leads, research accounts, craft highly personalized outreach, and follow up continuously. In late 2024, 11x launched Jordan, a multilingual AI phone agent that conducts real-time voice conversations for qualification and support in more than 30 languages. Together, these agents can run a large portion of the outbound funnel end-to-end, from initial outreach to handoff, with human oversight focused on high-value exceptions. By early 2026, 11x had exploded in valuation after a Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz, a rare win for a UK-first startup. The company processes millions of interactions for high-growth tech companies such as Otter.ai and Airwallex and is expanding its footprint in San Francisco to preempt US-based competitors. The roadmap centers on "digital teams" that coordinate multiple agents across tasks: one agent identifies a lead, another calls, a third negotiates logistics, and a final agent drafts the contract. This orchestration layer is the company's strategic bet on becoming the default system for revenue operations. The company's roots include Y Combinator's Summer 2023 batch, which accelerated its US network and credibility, and its UK engineering base sits in the London Bridge tech hub. Investor support spans US and European capital: a16z led the Series B, Benchmark led the Series A, Lux Capital participated early, Quiet Capital backed growth, and 20VC provided influential local support. In 2026, 11x is the UK's most visible play on AI-native revenue teams, aiming to become a category-defining platform for autonomous sales operations.

StartupGrowthAIAutomationSales

Anyline

Vienna, Austria · Startup

Anyline is a Vienna-based computer vision company founded in 2013 that provides mobile OCR and scanning SDK technology, enabling smartphones and tablets to read text, barcodes, IDs, license plates, and meter readings using the device camera. The company serves enterprise clients in energy, logistics, government, and automotive, with deployments in over 100 countries. Anyline has raised approximately $20 million and partners with organizations like the US Department of Homeland Security. It is a standout Austrian deep-tech company that turned on-device AI scanning into a scalable B2B platform.

StartupGrowthComputer VisionEnterprise SoftwareAI

Blockbrain

Berlin, Germany · Startup

Blockbrain builds private enterprise AI assistants that connect to internal knowledge tools such as Slack, Notion, Google Drive, and email. The platform creates context-aware internal search and answer workflows to reduce information fragmentation and speed up employee access to institutional knowledge.

StartupEarly StageAIEnterprise SoftwareB2B SaaS

Comudel

Lisbon, Portugal · Startup

Comudel develops a business operating system that automates workflows, legal contract handling, and AI-assisted financial operations for companies. Founded in 2022, it is associated with Unicorn Factory Lisboa and Instituto Pedro Nunes, operates from The Fintech House in Lisbon, and participated in the SPRINT accelerator focused on compliance and enterprise operations.

StartupEarly StageFinTechEnterprise SoftwareAI
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Dataiku

Paris, France · Startup

Dataiku is an enterprise AI platform that enables data teams to collaboratively build, deploy, and manage machine learning and analytics projects at scale. Founded in Paris and now also headquartered in New York, Dataiku serves over 500 enterprise customers including Unilever, GE, and Sephora. The platform bridges the gap between data scientists, analysts, and business users, and was valued at $3.7 billion after its 2022 Series F round.

StartupLate StageAIEnterprise SoftwareData

ElevenLabs

London, United Kingdom · Startup

ElevenLabs is an AI voice and speech synthesis company co-founded in 2022 by Piotr Dabkowski and Mati Staniszewski, both Polish-born engineers with backgrounds at Google and Palantir. The company develops state-of-the-art text-to-speech, voice cloning, and audio AI models that produce remarkably natural multilingual speech. ElevenLabs serves use cases ranging from audiobook narration and film dubbing to real-time voice agents and game characters. The company has raised over $180 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and NVIDIA, reaching a reported valuation above $11 billion. With offices in London, New York, and Warsaw, ElevenLabs is one of Europe's fastest-growing AI companies and a global leader in generative voice technology.

StartupGrowthAIAudio

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