> Relative number of technology unicorns headquartered in Europe would be a good start.
You seem a bit confused. "Unicorns" are characterized not by technology but by coming up with novel business plans that can disrupt incumbents. The likes of Google and Apple are tech companies, but Uber, NetFlix, AirBnB, etc have tech as a secondary support role to what actually drives the unicorn status.
More nuanced, what characterizes a unicorn isn't even a successful business plan. Being able to fool a fat wallets investor to dump cash on your idea is the key aspect that makes and breaks a unicorn, and tech is an afterthought.
> Or number of bleeding edge tech industries you'd say "Europe" is leading (e.g. space, military, nuclear, AI, etc)
France is the world's second largest arms exporter in the world, ahead of Russia.
In the top 10 list of world's arms exporters, 5 countries are EU members.
Not bad, for a region that has offloaded it's arms industry to the US.
Also, does the US have anything that comes close to ASML? Perhaps a TikTok clone or an app to rent apartments counts more as tech than it, perhaps?
Exactly my point.
> Technology
Relative number of technology unicorns headquartered in Europe would be a good start.
Or number of bleeding edge tech industries you'd say "Europe" is leading (e.g. space, military, nuclear, AI, etc)