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Metro area · Europe

Brussels

Metro area · Belgium · Pop. 2.5M

A public taster of the full Brussels ecosystem on Dealroom — request a demo for live deal flow, founder pedigrees, AI-talent maps, and the full cap table for every company below.

$13.4B+50%
Combined startup EV
$138.5M
VC invested (last 12mo)
384
Tracked startups
#119/ 199
Unicorns per 1M people · cities rank
🦄 Unicorns
3
3 live $1B+ companies
💎 Decacorns
0
🐎 Thoroughbreds
4
Top 1% growth · $500M+

Enterprise value · 2015–2025

Brussels grew 13.1× since 2015

Combined enterprise value of every tracked startup headquartered in Brussels that's still operating today — public and private companies combined, totalled by founding-year cohort.

0 $5B $10B $15B $20B Brussels · $13.5B 2015 2018 2021 2024 2025

Adjacent cities by EV

Startup funnel

Brussels's power-law funnel

From the first cheque written to a $10B+ outcome. Each arrow shows what fraction of companies at one stage graduate to the next, tracked by founding cohort.

Pre-Seed
99
Seed
90
Series A
43
Series B
20
Series C
4
Unicorn
3

* C→Unicorn and Unicorn→Decacorn rates are derived from current counts (no founding-cohort data); the four mid-funnel rates use Dealroom's cohort tracking.

Notable companies

Top private companies in Brussels

Up to 20 names per tier from Dealroom's tracked dataset. Decacorns are valued $10B+, unicorns $1B+, thoroughbreds have crossed $100M in revenue.

Unicorns $1B+ valuation 3
KeyrockCollibraBureau van Dijk
Thoroughbreds+ $100M+ revenue 4
LineasCollibraPro-unityVoxbone

Academia

Brussels's academic flywheel

Companies founded by university alumni or spun out of research, plus the institutions producing the most founders tied to Brussels.

University-linked startup formation
45
University spinouts
315
Total alumni-founded companies
209
Of which startups (<$15M raised)
82
Breakouts ($15M-100M)
24
Scaleups ($100M+)

Vs. similarly-sized ecosystems

How Brussels stacks up

Peers chosen from the same country (Belgium), sized closest to Brussels by combined EV. The scatter plots growth × current size — outliers in the upper-right are ecosystems compounding fastest.

Combined enterprise value
$65.2B
Brussels
$13.4B
$5.6B
$3.7B
$1.7B
EV growth (5-yr ×) vs current EV

Top overview

Belgium — top cities

Top cities in Belgium ranked by combined EV. Brussels's row is highlighted.

# Ecosystem Combined EV 5-yr EV growth Unicorns VC invested Tracked startups
1 Ghent $65.2B 13.0× 6 $237.7M 318
2 Brussels $13.4B 7.5× 3 $138.5M 384
3 Antwerp $5.6B 1.4× 1 $119.1M 357
4 Leuven $3.7B 8.4× 0 $111.6M 109
5 Liège $1.7B 4.4× 0 $32.9M 103

Premium analytics

What we don't show on this page (yet)

Sector breakdowns, founder origins, AI-talent leaderboards and live deal flow are gated to logged-in Dealroom users. Book a demo to access the full Brussels dataset — or see a sample on the Dealroom app.

Sector breakdown
Where Brussels's unicorns concentrate
Fintech
AI / Enterprise SW
Health Tech
Biotech
Cybersecurity
Consumer
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Capital autonomy
Brussels's domestic vs foreign capital mix
% domestic VC by stage
Cross-border lead investors
Sovereign-fund participation
Foreign-LP exposure
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Recent momentum
Brussels's VC investment trajectory by stage
2024 vs 2025 by stage
Round-size trends
Stage-conversion deltas
Quarterly velocity
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Founder origins
Where Brussels's startup founders come from
By country of origin
Per capita
Top universities
Top alumni-factory companies
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AI talent
Top employers of AI talent in Brussels
Core AI roles
Frontier AI roles
YoY hiring growth
Senior + lead engineers
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Deal flow
Live deal flow & funding rounds in Brussels
New rounds last 30 days
Stage breakdown
Active investors
Round-size trends
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