Breeding ‘unicorns’: Tracing the rise of the European investor state in the European venture capital market

Abstract

This paper takes the recent public policy innovations of the European Commission to foster the growth of ‘unicorns’ through direct interventions as an entry point to inquire into the changing role of the EU in the European Venture Capital Market. Based on a reconstruction of EU public policy interventions from the 1990s onwards, we show the constitutive, yet changing role of EU public actors in that market. The latest engagement of EU public policy, aiming to select and nurture start-ups with the potential to become unicorns, we argue, must be understood as a new layer in this trajectory of foundational market investment. Moving from an initial ‘market crafting’ approach (1990–2000) to ‘market fixing’ (2001–2013), this new mode of intervention represents a qualitatively new level, which seeks to shape innovation outcomes along a European investment chain. We identify this modality of intervention as a new form of economic statecraft, driven by the goal of securing technological sovereignty, which together with the two other layers forms the basis of the European Investor State.