Forbes' European team gave their prediction for the year ahead ranging from the Metaverse, the end of nuclear power and tested valuations:
Daniel Ek, founder of Spotify, has been a, amassing a $4.4 billion fortune, while delivering blowout quarterly numbers that delighted Wall Street.
In 2022, our focus turns to a more sustainable future, one with a healthy dose of optimism, freed from the shackles of the past two years.Iain Martin, European News EditorEurope’s tech startups celebrated a banner year in 2021 with over $100 billion invested, a new record and more than double the amount invested in the prior 12 months.
Some of these headline-grabbing startups face a potentially challenging 12 months to ensure that they meet the ambitious targets promised to investors and grow into the eye-watering valuations set out in this year’s mega-rounds. Europe’s engineers and startup talent are likely to benefit from scenarios with the pandemic, and remote work becoming a default option for many, stripping away traditional geographic barriers or pressure to relocate to a tech hub like London, Berlin or Paris.
Those valuations are also likely to be tested by how the crop of European startups that went public in 2021—some perhaps prematurely via a SPAC listing—fare. The question of whether British and European institutional investors have the same appetite as their colleagues across the Atlantic for fast-growing but loss-making startups is likely to continue and will see more European listings on NYSE and Nasdaq.
A cursory search of the leading jobs board Indeed reveals 1,300 adverts containing the word “metaverse” in the U.S. alone, so if you didn’t know about it last year, well, by the end of 2022, your next job might just be inside it—or at least related to it. It’ll take