Balderton’s portfolio contains corporations akin to Revolut, Dream Video games, GoCardless, Contentful, Wayve and PhotoRoom.
Balderton Capital, one in every of Europe’s main funding corporations primarily based in London, has unveiled two separate early-stage and development funds for European founders.
In an announcement at the moment (12 August), the VC agency stated it has created a $615m Early Stage Fund IX and a $685m Development Fund II to again bold European entrepreneurs from seed stage by IPO (preliminary public providing). This implies the mixed worth of funding introduced is $1.3bn – one in every of Europe’s largest funds aimed toward early and development stage start-ups.
Balderton stated that the funds come at a time when Europe has established itself as a frontrunner in AI, with London and Paris being the important thing innovation centres.
“The explanations for this usually are not shocking or new: world-class establishments and engineers, a rising tradition of entrepreneurialism, a developed funding ecosystem and, more and more, third and fourth era founders,” the announcement reads.
The VC agency cited knowledge from Make investments Europe and Cambridge Associates that discovered European VC funds outperformed North American funds over each a 10- and 15-year interval.
“We consider one of the simplest ways to vary the world is to construct a enterprise – and that many of those world-changing companies will likely be inbuilt Europe,” stated Bernard Liautaud, managing accomplice at Balderton.
“Our mission is straightforward: to be the accomplice of option to the founders beginning and rising these European know-how corporations. These new funds put us able to do exactly that.”
Balderton has invested in additional than 275 know-how corporations throughout Europe because it was based in 2000. Its present portfolio contains Revolut, Dream Video games, GoCardless, Contentful, Aircall, Wayve, Author and PhotoRoom.
A few of the corporations it has invested in up to now embrace Darktrace, Depop, MySQL, Peakon, Recorded Future, Talend and THG.
“With Balderton’s 65 crew members throughout Europe, $1.3bn in new funds, and a robust portfolio of greater than 125 corporations, the agency is happy to proceed its work of partnering with Europe’s prime entrepreneurs as they construct world-changing corporations,” the agency stated.
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