𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞'𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 €𝟏𝐛𝐧 𝐟𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬: 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐕𝐂?

The table below show that only 5 home-grown fund managers feature in the list of top 20 Series B+ investors breeding European unicorns. And even then, the list of 5 include Accel Europe, DST Global (Yuri Milner – of Mail.ru fame) and Index Ventures (started by 3 US brothers who have taken their Geneva-born fund global).

Why this lack of showing in the league tables? Well, mostly size of funds: smaller funds (say €100-200m) force managers to approach opportunities cautiously, with capital efficiency in mind. This in turn doesn’t make for like-minded investors ready for syndication with their deep-pocketed US brethren who are happily cherry-picking European companies at a later stage.

Enter a new type of European fund managers, those who manage funds of €1bn or more. The list I have compiled (please errors or omissions in Comments) include:
✔️ Atomico*
✔️ AVP – Atlantic Vantage Point (fka Axa Ventures Partners)
✔️ Cathay Capital Innovation
✔️ EQT Ventures
‍✔️ FSI*
✔️ Keensight Capital*

And we know a few others are in the works, such as AUDACIA, Jolt Capital, Kembara Fund* or Lazard Elaia.And this adds to the list of European fund managers who have sizeable funds (in excess of €500m), for instance: Balderton Capital, Headline, Index Ventures, Innovation Industries, Lakestar or LocalGlobe/Latitude.

Many of these fund managers (marked by “*”) are supported by the European Technology Champion Initiative (ETICI), a new instrument from the European Investment Fund (EIF). Unfortunately, the ETCI doesn’t publish a full list of ETCI supported funds, neither does it have any influence over these funds’ willingness to look at companies funded by other parts of the EU system, such as the European Innovation Council (EIC) fund.

In addition, many of these fund managers owe their success to investing SaaS, so their interest in deeptech is often limited to software companies seeking to leverage AI to upend exiting industries.

So, for the time being, Europe will have to do with smaller specialist deeptech investors and let successful European deeptech companies go to where the capital is: the US.

📎 Source:
https://dealroom.co/guides/vc-investor-ranking

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