Creandum Fund VII

When we closed Creandum VI back in March 2021 we were close to the peak of the pandemic cycle. Valuations were sky high and liquidity was in plentiful supply. The situation has certainly changed since then as capital has become scarcer and investment levels have dropped significantly from these highs.

We’ve of course been here before. Creandum was started in the wake of the dotcom bubble which had a devastating impact on the nascent European VC market. It’s also the case that some of our most successful investments came out of the 2008/9 economic crisis. 

Over the course of the past 2.5 years, despite market conditions, we have maintained our investment cadence because we know that the best founders will emerge at any point in the economic cycle. We have also seen firsthand how the European tech market has evolved over the past 20 years with the seeds laid for significant future growth. 

So today, we’re proud and excited to announce the closing of Creandum VII, a €500m fund to continue to find and back Europe’s winners at Seed and Series A. We could have raised even more but believe strongly that a disciplined focus and consistent approach is key to maintaining the market-leading returns we have been able to deliver to our investors. Which for us means a generalist approach to partnering with the best entrepreneurs building the next global, category-defining companies at the earliest of stages.

Speaking recently to the Financial Times, Jon Biggs, partner at one of the Fund’s LPs, Top Tier, said that Creandum’s returns demonstrated that European venture capital groups could match those of their Silicon Valley peers. “The firm is comfortably at the top table of global VCs,” he said. 

We are extremely fortunate to count many of the world’s leading investors as LPs, including university endowments, pension funds, and charitable foundations. In fact, 5 out of the 8 largest US university endowments are now invested in Creandum funds. The fact that half of the capital raised for Creandum VII is from US investors shows a renewed appetite for exposure to European tech.

We feel very bullish about the prospects for Europe. In the last quarter, we saw upticks both in funding and valuations largely driven by AI and SaaS. Paris is emerging as a global powerhouse in AI and we are excited to be backing startups like the H Company, founded by some of the world’s best AI minds to pioneer the development of Artificial General Intelligence.

Climate tech is another massive opportunity in Europe. In 2023, 22% of VC funding in Europe went to climate tech companies compared to just 7% in the US. European companies, such as Enode and Monta, are at the forefront of efforts to decarbonize the power sector.  

Europe has all the ingredients to produce the category-defining companies of the future and we can’t wait to support a new generation of founders on their paths to get there.

To all our team, LPs, portfolio companies, co-investors and follow-on investors, we thank you again for joining us on this journey. And lastly thanks to all entrepreneurs and their teams for the relentless efforts to build category defining leading companies and for the privilege to partner with you. 

The Creandum Partners