Hurun Benelux Unicorn Index 2026
Europe's Quietest Tech Power, Counted
19 unicorns worth €47.8 billion, built by 30 million people. Counted as one country, the Benelux Union would sit in the world's top ten — level with Singapore and ahead of Israel, two nations famous for startups. The Hurun Benelux Unicorn Index 2026 is the definitive ranking of the billion-dollar startups of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, profiling every unicorn, every founder and every graduate — and asking the question that will define the next decade: the Benelux has quietly built a world-class ecosystem; can it now keep its champions and grow a hundred-billion-dollar one?
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19 — active unicorns: 11 Dutch, 7 Belgian, 1 Luxembourg
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€47.8bn — total value (US$52.1bn)
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7 — new faces, incl. Luxembourg's first-ever unicorn
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10th — in the world as one country, level with Singapore (20), ahead of Israel (17)
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45,000+ — jobs worldwide
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€5bn+ — annual sales
The year the quiet ecosystem got loud
Odoo takes the crown at €7.0 billion — up €2.0 billion in a single year, the largest absolute gain on the index, achieved without a euro of primary capital: every buyer, from CapitalG and Sequoia to General Atlantic, came for old shares. Founder Fabien Pinckaers, who started the company as a UCLouvain student in 2002, still owns more than half — and says the market still undervalues it, putting its worth nearer €10 billion. Wonderful went from founding to €4.6 billion in eighteen months, straight in at number three — one of the fastest unicorns Europe has ever produced. Nearfield Instruments gave Rotterdam its first unicorn on the largest deeptech round in Dutch history. I-care is Wallonia's first modern unicorn, and Aikido Security Europe's first reported unicorn of 2026. And the index was marked to reality: Miro and Mollie were re-priced downward by a combined €17.3 billion — the largest absolute write-downs in the history of any Hurun national index.
The Top 10
Source: Hurun Research Institute, Benelux Unicorn Index 2026.
The jobs behind the valuations
The 19 unicorns employ more than 45,000 people and generate over €5 billion of annual sales — with the honest caveat that more than half of those jobs are at online grocer Picnic, mostly in warehouses and delivery vans: the least tech-looking employment a tech index has ever produced.
Two opposite geographies at once
Amsterdam hosts 10 of the 19 unicorns — 52% of the union's total value — a concentration that rivals Paris's dominance of France. Belgium, by contrast, spreads its seven unicorns across four cities: Ghent (team.blue, Deliverect, Aikido), Brussels (Kpler, Keyrock), Mons (I-care) and Louvain-la-Neuve (Odoo). Ghent, a Flemish city of fewer than 300,000 people, hosts three unicorns plus the listed graduates argenx and Ablynx — per capita, the hardest-punching unicorn city in Europe. And Luxembourg finally joins the board: nanotube maker OCSiAl is the Grand Duchy's first unicorn.
Who builds them
The 45 founders were on average 32 when they started, and took ten years to build a billion-dollar company. Half are serial founders; they are most likely to have studied at the University of Amsterdam or Ghent University. A third were born abroad — half the 19 unicorns have at least one founder born outside the Benelux, proof of the region's pull. The glaring gap is stated plainly: not one of the 45 founders is a woman.
The graduates: the big three
Behind the ecosystem stand three listed giants worth roughly US$800 billion between them: ASML (~US$660bn), Europe's most valuable technology company; Booking.com (US$100bn+); and argenx (~US$59bn), Belgium's most valuable life-sciences company and the top-ranked graduate of this index. Just Eat Takeaway — founded by Jitse Groen from his University of Twente student room — completes the legend class. None of the 45 unicorn founders worked at the giants: the unicorns come from the second wave — startups, spin-outs and founder factories of their own.
The diaspora ledger
Benelux-born founders abroad have built a second, parallel index worth US$45–60 billion: Commure (US$7bn), Collibra (US$5.25bn), Poolside AI, Remote, GitLab (NASDAQ-listed above US$11bn) and thirteen more, overwhelmingly in San Francisco, New York and Seattle. Add the CEO diaspora — Frank Slootman (Snowflake), Werner Vogels (Amazon), Durk Kingma (OpenAI founding team) — and the pattern is the report's central warning: the talent is made here; the companies, too often, are made in America.
What needs to happen
Act I — building unicorns — has succeeded. Act II is keeping them and scaling them. The report's recommendations include piloting EU Inc — the Commission's 28th-regime incorporation proposal — in the Benelux first; unlocking pension capital (1% of ABP's assets alone would be €5 billion for the growth stage); bridging Belgium's language-divided venture markets; and tapping the Eindhoven deeptech reserve around ASML and Brainport.
"To compete with America and China, Europe needs hundred-billion-dollar unicorns — and ultimately a trillion-dollar one. Benelux is on the way: ASML, Adyen and argenx have shown the path, and the nineteen companies in this index are walking it."
— Rupert Hoogewerf, Chairman and Chief Researcher, Hurun Research Institute
About the report
The Hurun Benelux Unicorn Index 2026 is the sixth report in the Hurun global unicorn series for 2026, following the Hurun Global Unicorn Index 2026 (released 25 June 2026) and country reports on the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and France. It covers unlisted companies founded in 2000 or later and valued at US$1 billion or more, with valuations as of 1 January 2026 and key events updated to the date of publication.
For further information, please contact:
Alexandra Sanne/ Porsha Pan
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Ada Shan, Hurun representative in the UK & Europe
07539018042
About Hurun Inc.
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Established in the United Kingdom in 1999, Hurun is a research and media group, promoting entrepreneurship through its lists and research. Widely regarded as an opinion-leader in the world of business, Hurun generated 8 billion views on the Hurun brand in 2023, mainly in China and India, and recently expanding to the UK, US, Canada and Australia.
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