Europe on track for record tech investments this year: Atomico

Europe's tech sector is on track for a record level of investments this year but poor access to late-stage capital is keeping it from creating independent tech "gorillas", one of the region's most active investors said.

Europe is expected to hit $13.6 billion in tech investments in 2016, up from $12.6 billion in 2015 and almost five times levels five years ago, venture capital firm Atomico said in a report released at Slush, one of the region's biggest tech start-up conferences.

New hives of activity are popping up outside the main tech hubs in places like Munich, Zurich, Copenhagen and Lisbon with money flowing into industries ranging from music and fintech to fashion and food.

Long the laggard in terms of risk-taking, access to capital and creation of globally successful companies relative to Silicon Valley, Europe's rising tech scene is starting to stand out in some unexpected ways.

Five of the world's top ten technical universities are located in the region and Europe also appears to have an edge over the United States in software development. StackOverflow Insights, which tracks programmer trends, reckons there are 4.7 million professional tech developers in Europe versus 4.1 million in the United States.

Just this month, Facebook and Google announced major expansions of their teams in Europe, citing skilled talent. "We haven't had the gorillas in terms of size, but it's getting there," said Mattias Ljungman, who created Atomico with Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom. "Slowly but surely it's building up," he told Reuters. Instead of staying independent and going public, many European tech firms tend to sell early to buyers in the United States or China