Atomico, the European mission capital firm based by Skype’s Niklas Zennström, has announced that it has closed its fifth fund — “Atomico V” — giving it one other $820 million to invest in European startups.
The London-headquartered VC firm’s outdated fund closed at $765 million, so right here’s an amplify over three years within the past. Nonetheless, the remit stays largely the same, as Atomico says it plans to double down on its approach of backing “mission-pushed” European founders at Series A, nonetheless with the capability to also invest at Series B and C into what it calls “breakout” corporations.
The contemporary fund brings to a hefty $2.7 billion the entire resources that Atomico has below administration. Buyers are acknowledged to embody diverse institutional investors, similar to pension funds, fund-of-funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance corporations, endowments, banks, family locations of work and executive-backed entities from across the world.
A sequence of particular person LPs devour backed Atomico V, too, together with what are described as founders and early staff members from just a few of Europe’s most a success startups over the last 10 years, together with Adyen, Klarna, TransferWise, Spotify, Supercell, Skype and Zoopla.
Founders delivering “particular, transformational change”
Atomico’s Zennström has long argued that entrepreneurs, no longer politicians, are the contemporary “changemakers” ensuing from the manner technology is reshaping society and the economy. Inherent on this world interrogate is that technology and entrepreneurship can and desires to be a force for true and that mission capital (and Atomico, particularly) has a “considerable piece to play in an world with so many pressing challenges” — from sustainability, fixing education, to higher healthcare. Nonetheless, not like a pure Silicon Valley standpoint, Zennström doesn’t deem that “for true” is inevitable and could tranquil require formal assessments and balances to be set in plot (note the firm’s “Conscious Scaling” programme).
To that discontinue, Atomico says that fund V will allow it to continue to accomplice with “intrepid European founders, who affirm particular, transformational change across every ingredient of society and the economy,” with the function of constructing class-a success and sector-defining corporations. “We’re guided by a straightforward belief: income and cause are mutually reinforcing, no longer mutually distinctive,” says Zennström in a assertion.
In the meantime, Atomico has already made just a few investments out of fund V. They embody metropolis farming firm Infarm; scientific AI firm HealX; AI-assisted construct and constructing simulation firm Spacemaker; machine studying-based scientific imaging firm Kheiron Scientific, worker retention firm Peakon; digital procurement platform Scoutbee, childcare platform Koru Early life; sales staff automation machine Automation Hero; and doctor messaging provider AccuRx.
Personnel adjustments
The formal closing of Atomico’s fifth fund marks a brand contemporary generation for the VC, which has viewed a freshening up of its 60-particular person investor and operational staff over the last three years.
Honest last month, Irina Haivas, Atomico’s surgeon-turned-VC, was once promoted to accomplice. In March 2019, three contemporary (non-funding) companions had been added to the checklist: Bryce Keane (comms), Alison Smith (chief of workers) and Camilla Richards (investor relations). The outdated one year saw Sophia Bendz, the ragged Spotify world director of Advertising and marketing and marketing, promoted to accomplice. And in September 2017, Tom Wehmeier, the firm’s head of Learn, also made accomplice.
There had been departures, too. Most no longer too long within the past, long-time accomplice Mattias Ljungman left to raise his possess seed fund. Sooner than that, Carolina Brochado jumped ship to hitch SoftBank’s Vision Fund in London, and Teddie Wardi left for The United States to hitch Insight.
