3 minute read | April.08.2026
Orrick's Jamie Moore joins Seb Johnson of Scaling Europe, a European tech podcast, to unpack the sixth edition of our European venture capital deal term review. Deal Flow 6.0 draws on over 400 transactions completed by our clients in Europe in 2025.
Here are five takeaways – from market stabilization and shifting founder-investor dynamics to the rise of secondaries, the importance of early-stage housekeeping, and the outlook for 2026.
European tech dealmaking is finding a healthier rhythm. While 2025 started with slightly less deal volume, the deals being done are larger and late-stage activity is recovering: nearly 34% of our clients' deals were Series C rounds, and Series A through C round sizes are ticking upward. The seed stage is maturing, too – 2025 produced fewer but larger rounds, with better terms and more proven AI use cases.
The market is tilting gently in favor of founders – governance protections are entering deals earlier and lasting longer, with stronger information rights from the outset. But, Jamie emphasizes, this is not a swing back to the excesses of 2021.
“It’s a nice recalibration delicately swayed towards the founders…not too many people asking for increased voting for founders. Increasing faith in the later stage means there’s an ability to have more faith in the founders in the early stage.”
Secondary transactions are on the rise: 21% of equity financing deals in 2025 included a secondary component, with 37% occurring at Series B, rather than at seed or Series A, whereas earlier attempts in 2023–2024 were premature. For the biggest companies scaling rapidly through valuations, Jamie sees a pattern.
“There is a repeated opportunity for founders to take money off the table – and that’s often met with top-ups to their stake in the equity as well,” he says. “Being able to help with a release valve for founders – and enabling them to scale without worrying about paying for their mortgage, for example – is quite a nice thing for the ecosystem.”
Founder warranties are declining, but investors are compensating with deeper diligence – making good housekeeping more important than ever. Jamie advises founders minimize excessive structure at pre-seed, position the company to negotiate stronger documents at Series A, and get the house in order early.
"I'm regularly advising founders to build data rooms even before they get term sheets to make sure everything is looking good."
AI continues to dominate, but fintech is seeing a welcome uptick and SaaS is steadying out. Looking ahead, Jamie is optimistic: "The message is positive. If the state of my inbox is anything to go by, we are seeing a real uptick in dealmaking."
That uptick includes growing, non-distressed M&A activity – much of it involving U.S. buyers – alongside healthy early-stage financing and more late-stage rounds. “There’s still more standardization to come in terms of investor diligence and investor expectations,” he says, but the overall direction is clear. “It’s really nice to see some more sustainable dealmaking.”