Fly Ventures, a Berlin-based venture capital firm that invests in seed-stage startups in the European enterprise and deep tech space, has launched its third fund with €80 million. The company raised its last funding of 53 million euros in 2020.
The company targets technology founders and claims that Fund III was oversubscribed and raised in one closing. Meanwhile, the slight increase in fund size reflects the company's desire to operate as a boutique firm.
Matuschka told TechCrunch: More and more people are making this type of investment these days, but our strategy is to make this type of investment 2-3 years in advance, before anyone else cares. ”
Founded by Gabriel Matuschka and Fredrik Bergenlid, Fly Ventures invests €1 million to €4 million in rounds of €2 million to €10 million in the founding phase.
The company, led by Matt Wichrowski, Marie Brayer, Bergenlid and Matuschka, operates on an equal GP model with four partners spread across Berlin, London, Paris and Zurich.
“For Berlin/London, I think it's a plus for Munich in particular, because you can cover Munich from Berlin. And when it comes to more technical stuff, Munich tends to be a little bit stronger. But you have to do Germany and the UK. And I think in the last four years or so, Paris has also really accelerated on a more technical level. That's why we added Marie, who is based in Paris.” said.
Bergenlid previously worked at Google developing Google Assistant, and Matuschka previously founded travel shopping club TripHunter, which was acquired by brands4friends and is now owned by eBay.
So far, AI accounts for about 45% of Fly's investments, with vertical applications and industrial technology accounting for 35% and development tools/infrastructure accounting for 20%.
The company's portfolio includes clinical trial marketplace Inato, anti-money laundering startup Salv, and cybersecurity startup GitGuardian.
Another company, Wayve, recently raised $1.05 billion in a Series C round led by SoftBank to advance autonomous driving through self-learning technology.
It also invested in Lakera, a Zurich-based startup aimed at protecting companies from LLM vulnerabilities, and Orbital Materials, a UK-based company developing fundamental models for materials science. I am.