Swedish VC firm Creandum — an early backer of Spotify and Klarna — has raised €500mn to fund budding European tech startups.
The fund comes at a potentially watershed moment for tech investment in Europe. After a two-year capital dry spell in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the sector is showing signs of a comeback.
“We feel very bullish about the prospects for Europe,” Creandum said in a statement. “In the last quarter, we saw upticks both in funding and valuations largely driven by AI and SaaS.”
Creandum’s fundraising follows a number of other big deals made this year. In March, deep tech investor Plural Platform launched a €400mn fund, while German VC World Fund raised €300mn to back climate tech startups. In May, Belgian venture capital firm Imec.xpand raised €300mn to invest in startups working in semiconductors and electronics.
“We are moving beyond the recovery phase and back into a period of growth,” Tom Wehmeier, partner at London-based VC Atomico, told the Financial Times.
Some of this year’s biggest deals include $300mn for German machine translation unicorn DeepL, £800mn for British fintech startup Abound, and a whopping $1bn for London-based autonomous driving tech startup Wayve.
Half of the capital raised for Creandum’s most recent fund came from US investors. Creandum’s investor base includes five of the eight largest US university endowments, as well as pension funds and foundations.
“We’re seeing a renewed appetite from US investors for exposure to European tech,” said Creandum.
The VC firm recently backed French AI startup H in a $220mn seed round, German SaaS company Codesphere in a $18mn Series A, and a $16mn Series A round for Spanish fintech Embat.