Pactum AI and Quantum Systems named 2025 Future Unicorn Award winners

Pactum AI, an Estonian firm specialised in AI agents, wins the Future Unicorn category; Quantum Systems, a German company in the field of drones, is crowned as the winner of the Dual-Use Technologies category

Pactum AI (Estonia) and Quantum Systems (Germany) are the winners of this year’s DIGITALEUROPE Future Unicorn Award, which for the first time ever featured two categories:

• Future Unicorn, recognising potential to become Europe’s next tech unicorn
• Dual-Use Technologies, celebrating potential to develop cutting-edge technologies for both civilian and military purposes

 DIGITALEUROPE’s Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl said:

“Today, only 14% of the world’s unicorns are from Europe. This is far from enough, especially at a time when Europe seeks to boost its economic and security resilience in an increasingly tense geopolitical context.

 Europe’s competitiveness lies in its capacity to champion and empower its innovators, and we have many of them – Our 2025 Future Unicorn Award winners are a testament to that and to Europe’s potential to reclaim its leadership on a global scale and win the tech race.

The crowned companies stand out in AI and drones, respectively, and are already contributing positively to our tech ecosystem and defence capabilities. We need to nurture these successful companies and help them stay in Europe. But for that, they need the right business conditions to scale up. Our 3-step gameplan: cut, simplify, incentivise offers concrete ideas on how to get there.”  

 About the Future Unicorn Award
The Future Unicorn Award is a collaboration between the 41 national trade associations affiliated with DIGITALEUROPE. Participants must be nominated by these associations and be European tech companies in the scale-up phase.

The winners have been announced by Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, at DIGITALEUROPE’s flagship annual conference Masters of Digital in Brussels.

• Find out more about the award and how the winner is chosen here
• Find out more about Masters of Digital, here