We investigate the international migration of European startups, focusing on both venture capital (VC)-backed ventures and high-potential non-VC-backed ventures founded in 25 European countries in the 2000-2021 period, and tracking migrations till 2025. We find that around 3% of European VC-backed ventures relocated their headquarters abroad, with the U. S. being the dominant destination, while only about 0.3% of similar non-VC-backed ventures did. We analyze the regional and firm-level drivers of migration, underscoring the importance of venture size, growth, VC investor origin, and the depth of the local venture capital supply. We also find that ventures that migrated to the U.S. obtained more VC, and were more likely to achieve successful exits via acquisition. Most importantly, we find that migration seldom implies the cessation of operations in the home country: most migrating ventures continued to hire in their home countries, and sometimes the CEOs still operated from there. We also found that international migration to the U.S. had a positive effect on the sales and labor productivity growth of the operations migrating startups maintained in their home countries.

COLOMBO Massimo;  QUAS Anita;  TOFAN Bogdan; 

VOLOSOVYCH Vadym; 

2026-09-03

Publications Office of the European Union

JRC148028

978-92-68-42540-4 (online),   

1831-9424 (online),   

EUR 40818,    OP KJ-01-26-346-EN-N (online),   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC148028,   

10.2760/7877852 (online),