VIENNA \u2014 Alexander Schwartz wasn\u2019t expecting two veteran innovation investors to show up at his Klosterneuburg office this spring, asking how to plot their escape from the U.S. After two decades in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the pair had decided it was time to come home.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey told me, \u2018It doesn\u2019t feel right over there anymore. Some of the opportunities are just gone,\u2019\u201d said Schwartz, who works at Xista, an innovation hub just outside Vienna. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut they see a window of opportunity here,\u201d Schwartz said of Europe.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump\u2019s return to the White House is starting to redraw the global tech map. As the U.S. tightens immigration rules and slashes research funding, Europe\u2019s startup scene \u2014 long overshadowed by Silicon Valley \u2014 is trying to seize a rare opening. From Vienna to Brussels, investors and policymakers see a chance to catch the talent, capital, and startups that once might have defaulted to the U.S. tech hub.<\/p>\n
Schwartz isn\u2019t seeing a sudden flood of inquiries, and he doesn\u2019t expect U.S. researchers and founders to abandon ship overnight. But as someone connected to both the startup scene through Xista and the research community at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), which shares a campus and some resources with Xista, he\u2019s noticing the conversation shifting.\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b (Some reporting for this article was conducted as part of a journalism residency funded by ISTA).<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople who would normally go to the U.S., some of those are either scared away or don\u2019t have the opportunity anymore,\u201d Schwartz said. \u201cThat\u2019s where we can step in and redirect that flow of talent and entrepreneurial people into Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n
European governments aren\u2019t waiting for the talent to find them on its own. In Vienna, officials have fast-tracked efforts to turn Austria into a safe haven<\/a> for U.S.-based researchers, offering accelerated hiring, research funding, and even proposing legal tweaks to make it easier for threatened scientists to land positions. Norway has launched a 100 million kroner<\/a> (about $9.64 million) fund to actively poach top academics, while France, Belgium, and the Netherlands have opened new scientific asylum programs for scholars fleeing the Trump-era chill.<\/p>\n For Brussels, the Trump shock has added urgency to long-simmering debates about Europe\u2019s economic independence. In March, the European Commission announced its long-awaited Savings and Investments Union<\/a> strategy, a plan to deepen the bloc\u2019s capital markets and make it easier for companies \u2014 especially startups \u2014 to raise money at home rather than fleeing to U.S. exchanges. The push builds on recommendations from the Draghi report<\/a>, commissioned by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, which warned that Europe risks falling permanently behind unless it builds stronger homegrown tech and innovation ecosystems.<\/p>\n Padraig Nolan, an advisory board member at the Europe Startup Nations Alliance, said Europe\u2019s deeper challenge is self-inflicted: a fragmented market and a chronic failure to help startups scale.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Trump curveball has really hit the reset button on the global economy, and for Europe in particular it\u2019s even more important now to stop relying on tech providers from other regions,\u201d said Nolan, also a nonresident fellow at Strategic Analysis and Policy Advice, or SAPA, a think tank focused on European competitiveness and innovation policy. <\/p>\n \u201cWe have great startups here, but the problem is getting them to scale,\u201d Nolan said. \u201cThe successful ones often move to the U.S., where the bigger rounds of funding are, and the pathways to scale are clearer.\u201d<\/p>\n