The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development published a study of about 190,000 innovative start-ups founded in the EU and the US between 2000 and 2025, finding that the EU scale-up gap primarily reflects barriers to commercialisation and late-stage financing rather than weaker inventive capacity. EU start-ups typically take longer to scale, while access to early-stage funding is broadly comparable across the two regions. EU start-ups reaching valuations above USD 1 billion take about eight years to do so, compared with just over seven years in the US. Although only 18% of EU firms at this scale hold patents, against about 52% in the US, patenting EU firms show comparable or slightly higher invention intensity and file earlier, yet take approximately 1.5 years longer to scale after their first filing. Financing differences emerge in later rounds, where a small group of US firms secure exceptionally large investments. Scaling is also associated with experienced founders, advanced education, acquisitions and early recruitment of external chief financial officers, which correlates with reaching scale more than one year sooner. The OECD recommends simplifying intellectual property protection and enforcement, deepening EU late-stage venture and growth-equity markets, and reducing regulatory barriers to large follow-on funding rounds. It also calls for stronger Single Market integration, greater mobility of experienced managers and founders, and closer coordination of entrepreneurial, industrial and competition policies so successful scale-ups generate broader local benefits.

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