A new study has found that European university spinouts have grown into a technology ecosystem valued at €370 billion, with photonics emerging as one of the fundamental research fields driving this expansion.
The European Spinouts Report 2025, produced by innovation intelligence platform Dealroom.co, analysed 17,000 spinout companies created since 1990, including 7,300 operating in deep tech and life sciences. The findings show how scientific research carried out in European universities is increasingly translating into venture‑backed firms and high‑value employment.
Collectively, these companies now support more than 160,000 jobs across the continent, with a combined enterprise value comparable to the GDP of Romania.
The report highlights photonics and quantum science as central technologies underpinning progress in many of Europe's fastest‑growing sectors, including robotics, artificial intelligence, climate technologies and semiconductor manufacturing. Deep‑tech spinouts - companies built on fundamental scientific research - play a particularly prominent role in this landscape, often requiring long development cycles but providing the foundations for major industrial advances.
Photonics, described as one of the core "engines" of deep‑tech innovation, was found to support a broad range of applications, from semiconductor production and medical diagnostics to advanced sensing and Earth observation. Its role as an enabling technology positions it at the heart of Europe's growing research commercialisation pipeline.
"Europe has built one of the most dynamic research spinout ecosystems in the world. We have a pipeline of science‑driven companies that is increasingly the envy of global innovation economies," said Dr Lutz Aschke, President of Photonics21. "Photonics sits at the core of this success: as a foundational technology of the modern innovation landscape, Europe's strength in optical science is translating into globally competitive companies across many sectors and domains. Ensuring these spinouts can scale and remain anchored in Europe will be critical to our industrial future."
The report shows that nearly 40% of the total enterprise value created by deep‑tech and life‑sciences spinouts has come from companies founded since 2015, pointing to rapid growth in university commercialisation activities. Photonics has been a visible beneficiary of recent investment in quantum research, advanced manufacturing and next‑generation communications infrastructure. Strong links between publicly funded R&D programmes and private venture capital have helped speed up the transition from laboratory research to market‑ready companies.
Spinouts are also becoming a core component of Europe's broader startup ecosystem. Since 2019, they have accounted for around 40% of all new deep‑tech and life‑sciences startups–an 80% increase on the previous decade. This shift reflects a growing investor focus on science‑based innovation.
Europe's strong spinout performance has been supported by long‑term public investment in research and innovation, aligned with EU industrial priorities. Initiatives such as Tech Tour Photonics - an investor network backed by a public‑private partnership between Photonics21 and the European Commission - are helping connect promising photonics companies with international investment communities.
As global competition intensifies in areas such as semiconductors and quantum technologies, the commercialisation of photonics research is increasingly seen as essential to Europe's technological sovereignty. The study concludes that enabling fields such as photonics and quantum are playing a critical role in converting Europe's scientific strengths into commercial products, skilled jobs and industrial capacity.