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Cybersecurity Index Q2 2025 - Key Insights

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Axeleo Capital (AXC)publishes the twelve edition of its “Cybersecurity Index”, a quarterly review of the European Cybersecurity ecosystem that monitors the pace of investments and innovation in the sector.

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Quantitative Insights

Q2 2025 confirmed the continued rebound of the European cybersecurity sector, with €294M raised across 37 deals, representing a 50% growth over Q1 and a year-on-year increase of nearly 36%.

This marks the busiest quarter in the last 12 months, as investor appetite returns, particularly for early-stage opportunities.

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Key Highlights for Q2 2025

1. Geographical breakdown: the UK and France still leading the way

While the United Kingdom remains the most active country by deal volume (9 deals, €66M), France stands out in total funding, with €48M raised across 3 deals, Sekoia.io, Qevlar AI and Memority.

Germany also maintains a strong presence, notably through Hawk’s €56M Series C in Berlin and Baobab’s €12M Series A.

Other notable regions include Spain (6 deals, €12M), Switzerland, and the Netherlands, each showing consistent growth in early-stage cyber innovation.

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2. Cloud, Threat Intelligence, and Fraud Lead Sector Activity

Top funded categories in Q2 2025 were:

• Identity & Access Management (22% of deals)

• Data Security (19%)

• Threat & Actor Intelligence (14%)

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3. Early-Stage Momentum Continues

Early-stage rounds (Pre-seed and Seed) made up 54% of total deals, with 15 Seed and 5 Pre-seed rounds completed this quarter.

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4. Top Deals of the Quarter

• Hawk (DE) – €56M Series C - AI-powered platform for anti-money laundering (AML), fraud prevention, and customer screening used by financial institutions worldwide.

• Zama (CH) – €53.3M Series B - Building open-source, privacy-preserving technologies for blockchain and AI using homomorphic encryption.

• Push Security (UK) – €30M Series B - Protects SaaS applications and employee identities by detecting and remediating security risks across the modern cloud stack.

• Sekoia.io (FR) – €26M Series B - Threat intelligence-driven SOC platform enabling real-time threat detection and response for enterprise security teams.

• Maze (UK) – €21,8M Series A - AI-native platform that deploys autonomous agents to investigate, triage, and remediate cloud vulnerabilities before exploitation.

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Exit Activity

Q2 recorded 8 exits, confirming renewed M&A momentum after a quieter start to the year. The activity underscores the growing maturity of the European ecosystem and the continued interest of both strategic and international acquirers in early-stage innovation.

This quarter’s exits spanned core categories such as Application Security, Data Security, and Identity & Access Management, with a notable presence of non-VC-backed companies among the targets.

Examples include:

• Coana (DK), acquired at pre-seed stage by Socket (US)

• Raito (BE), a data security startup acquired by Collibra (BE)

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5. Diversity Remains a Challenge

Only 2 deals involved at least one female founder (Steryon and TaDaweb), keeping the ratio at ~3%, similar to previous quarters. The ecosystem still lacks structural diversity in founding teams, especially at later stages.

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Methodology:

The Cybersecurity Index is based on data from Axeleo Capital's analysis as well as databases,  such as Crunchbase in particular. These data sources mainly gather information on deals and  rounds that have been publicly disclosed - many other raises are taking place, but without  announcements or communications on amounts (thus difficult to track). The analysis is limited  to companies headquartered in Europe, and with a value proposition focused on  Cybersecurity. As far as recorded fundraising is concerned, this refers to equity venture capital  fundraising only (i.e. excluding debt fundraising, subsidies and aid other than equity).

About Axeleo Capital:

Axeleo Capital 2 is a €70 million venture capital fund dedicated to B2B Tech start-ups,  including cybersecurity, across Europe. Axeleo Capital is a venture capital firm active on the  European technology scene and backed by a large pool of entrepreneur-investors. The fund  offers startup founders a unique support framework that combines equity investment,  operational and strategic coaching and an active ecosystem of over 100 high-level partners  and mentors. Its Cybersecurity investments include Seedata, Trustpair, Citalid, Mantra,  Yogosha (exit) and Alsid (exit).

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