The 2025 Forbes U30 Europe Technology list features founders like Black Forest Labs’ Frederic Boesel and Jonas Muller, who are advancing AI, alongside innovators like Vivenu’s Simon Hennes, who’s transforming event ticketing with tech-first solutions.
By Thomas Brewster, Zoya Hasan and Iain Martin
It’s been little over a year since Freiburg, Germany-based Black Forest Labs launched in 2024, but it’s made big waves in a short amount of time. Its AI is now the text-to-image generator integrated into the $6 billion (valuation) Mistral Al’s Le Chat, and it raised over $31 million in a seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz in August. Led by 28-year olds Frederic Boesel and Jonas Muller—along with their over 30 cofounders—the company is positioning itself to be a big mover in AI, making the base models underpinning powerful image generation widely accessible. As Andreessen Horowitz wrote after investing, the Black Forest Labs team “could accelerate innovation across a wide range of fields.”
For nearly a decade, Forbes has highlighted young entrepreneurs for our annual 30 Under 30 Europe Technology list, with the help of nominations from the public. To be considered for this year’s list, all candidates had to be under the age of 30 as of April 8, 2025, and never before named to an 30 Under 30 North America, Asia or Europe list.
After months of reporting by Forbes editors, candidates were evaluated by a panel of judges including founder of London-based unicorn Faculty, Dr. Angie Ma; partner at Silicon Valley-based IVP, Eric Liaw; EQT Growth partner Carolina Brochado and Under 30 alum and Chainalysis cofounder Jonathan Levin.
This year’s cohort is full of founders who’ve made waves in AI just a year or two after founding. Caoimhe Murphy, 29 left another Forbes Under 30 alum, Synesthesia, in 2024 to cofound Anam, which creates AI avatars for customer service and sales. It’s already attracting top tier clients like Spotify and German multinational Henkel. Sweden’s Lovable, founded in 2023 by 24-year-old Fabian Hedin lets users spin up working apps with just some text prompts. And Georgina Steele, 29, founded U.K.-based Maiven last year, which developed AI that can flag potential breaches of environmental law.
Others members of this year’s list are making big impacts by disrupting older industries. Featured honoree Simon Hennes, the 27-year-old cofounder of Vivenu, says his ticketing platform is taking a tech-first, white label approach to event ticketing, giving organisers control over how they sell tickets and handle customer information. It’s a different strategy to the major industry players like Ticketmaster, but Hennes thinks a fresh take on an old market is the way to shake things up.
“There are lots of Goliaths out there, right?” he told Forbes. “There are big, big companies with massive funding, with thousands of people in seed with a big history, and decades of providing these services. It’s not easy to compete with them, but at the same time, it doesn’t change the fact that your mission is important and people buy into it.”
Investors are confident that such bold approaches will pay off, and the companies on the Technology list have collectively raised more than $300 million in recent years. Among the companies who’ve scored big rounds, Vivenu has raised $60 million, Black Forest Labs $30 million and Lovable $20 million.
Not that fundraising is everything. The mission comes first. Hennes says that his company doesn’t yet need more funding as it’s a profitable business. Still, he wants to double headcount and revenue growth over the next year. “Our mission is to become the largest ticket provider globally, right? So we have a long term mission. It’s not a short-term mission, it’s not a mid-term mission. It’s a long term mission.”
The same will go for many of this year’s Under 30 Europe group. They may have made big splashes in no time at all, but the road ahead will be long and, with some luck, prosperous.
This year’s list was edited by Thomas Brewster, Zoya Hasan and Iain Martin . For a link to our complete 30 Under 30 Europe Technology list, click here, and for full 30 Under 30 Europe coverage, click here.
