Record investment in Austrian start-ups

The total amount invested in Austrian startups rose sharply in the first half of the year.

After breaking all global records for start-up financing in 2021, the market environment has clouded significantly due to rising interest rates, the threat of recession, inflation and economic uncertainty. Listed technology companies and scale-ups, or unicorns focused on fast, aggressive growth, would be particularly affected. Due to challenging market conditions for financing rounds, unicorns around the world have recently laid off employees, according to a recent report by Erste Bank Austria.

However, the data for the first half of 2022 would not yet show any signs of a decline in the funding market for Austrian startups. On the contrary, in the first half of 2022, more money flowed into startups than ever before. The volume of financing exceeded that of the same period last year by 67 percent, reaching a total of EUR 881 million. However, the two significant financing rounds of TTTech Auto and Gostudent, each with €300 million and €250 million respectively, accounted for around 62 percent of total investment capital. This is shown by figures from the Start-up Investment Barometer of the consulting organization EY in cooperation with the Austrian Angel Investors Association (AAIA) and the Austrian Private Equity and Venture Capital Organization (AVCO).

"In Austria, the start-up boom continued in the first half of 2022 despite the already stormy environment. Never before has so much capital been put into startups in one half-year as this year," said Florian Haas, Head of Start-up at consultancy EY Austria. "However, these figures should not lead to the fallacy that the boom of the record year 2021 in Austria will continue unabated. Many financing rounds were already launched in 2021 or in the still strong first months of 2022 and have now been completed. Especially in growth financing, which in Austria is still done almost exclusively by international investor groups, the strong restraint of venture capitalists will be reflected in the coming months," says the expert.