We raised a new $400m early-stage fund to support Europe’s best tech businesses

NOV 12, 2019

We are delighted to announce our new $400m fund to continue supporting outstanding European founders at Series A – a critical stage in a startup’s journey.

The Balderton investment team and platform leads

We are launching this fund against a backdrop of unprecedented momentum within the European tech ecosystem. The number of Series A rounds in Europe per year has quadrupled since 2012, with the total amount of VC funding flowing into European startups hitting record highs last year – rising from €11.5bn in 2014 to €24.6bn in 2018As with previous funds, we’ll be looking to invest in leading-edge technologies, as well as strong brands with demonstrable momentum. The new fund will be managed by an investment team of 15 working as a single team across Europe. We also now have permanent staff members based in both Paris and Berlin to help build even closer relationships with entrepreneurs, seed funds and accelerators and support portfolio companies on the ground.

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 We believe Europe has the potential to build the next generation of technology giants, and we are focused on helping brilliant founders fulfil that ambition. We are seeing more and more exceptional founders raising Series A in Europe. With today’s new fund we want to build on that momentum.

Bernard Liautaud, Managing Partner, Balderton

We know from our firm’s 20 years of European investment experience that Series A is a critical point in a startup’s journey – it’s a magical moment when they are reaching product-market fit, are poised to scale and have to make decisions that can affect their growth trajectory for years to come. Our whole team is dedicated to helping our founders tackle those decisions as they embark on their journey

Bernard Liautaud, Managing Partner, Balderton

Helping European companies to scale

Our team is dedicated to helping businesses to scale. Our Build platform provides talent, marketing, finance and legal services to support companies as they scale. In addition to Build’s in-house team, the platform connects founders and their teams to an active community of peers. The firm’s unique equal partnership model means every founder is fully supported by the collective expertise of the partnership.In the spirit of our belief in engineering serendipity, we support founding teams by providing them with access to the global industry leaders of the Balderton Executive Council; the CEO Collective network and offsite; and functional team events, meet-ups and workshops hosted at our Kings Cross headquarters and across Europe.

Since the start of 2018, Balderton’s portfolio has raised over $2bn in follow-on funding, and now employs 18,000+ people in 50+ countries.

We now have active investments in more than 90 companies, founded across 15 European countries. This is our seventh early-stage fund since its formation in 2000, and eighth including Liquidity I, bringing the total funds to over $3bn.

Since 2018, Balderton’s team has connected with 7,500+ European founders and invested in 26 new companies.

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