A London-based funding agency started by Skype founder Niklas Zennström, named Atomico Ventures, has closed its fourth fund with $765 million. It is now one of the Europe’s single largest venture capital funds.
Its latest fund, one of many biggest raised in Europe, is a large step-up from its earlier car, which upraised $475m, and consisted of a number of new buyers, indicative of a number of European pension funds.
“This is significant because it shows that institutional investors believe that Europe will carry on producing successful tech companies, even though it’s a politically challenging environment and financial markets are tough,” Mr. Zennström stated in a report. That it was capable of elevating 60 percent more than the earlier fund measurement and “more than our own goal is a testament to our track record,” he stated.
Atomico has financed seven firms that grew to be valued greater than a billion, by means of 4 funds over the previous eleven years, together with Climate Corporation, a climate knowledge corporation that was purchased by Monsanto for $1.1bn, and cell gaming success Supercell, recently acquired by Chinese web big Tencent at a valuation of $10.2bn.
“Supercell was one of the largest-ever exits of a venture-backed company in Europe,” said Matthias Ljungman, co-founder, and associate at Atomico. “The wider push we have done around analyzing the state of European tech and being a genuine champion of the ecosystem, we think has had multiplicative effects.”
The objective of the brand new endowment is to fill a niche that is still an enormous obstacle to early-stage European companies, in comparison with their American and Asian counterparts. Though there have been more than 1,700 seed and first-round “Series A” offers prior to now 12 months, the transformation fee to later stage remains to be decreasing than elsewhere.
“Europe has to support its own ecosystem, we need to close the loop of funding — there is too little late-stage venture money available compared to the number of opportunities,” Mr. Zennstrom stated.
“I do think [Atomico] fills an important role in the ecosystem,” stated Kathryn Mayne, managing director at fund-of-funds Horsley Bridge Partners, which capitalizes in a number of enterprise capital companies, however not Atomico. “The new fund enables them to write larger cheques to help backing up technology companies as they scale and hopefully turn into very large companies.”
Regardless of the funding delay, European entrepreneurs are far headfirst of the place they had been when the agency was based in 2006, Mr. Zennstrom says, partly due to the suggestions loop from former entrepreneurs — reminiscent of himself — investing in new ones.
“When we look at cohorts of our companies, our entrepreneurs are more goal-oriented than they used to be,” he provides.
“They are using deeper tech and more talented people are getting into the sector. In a way, it’s a watershed moment in European tech.”
