Octopus Ventures raises US$284mil fund for European startups

LONDON: Octopus Ventures, the Londonbased venture capital firm, has raised 230 million euros (US$284mil) to invest in young European startups.

The new funds bring the total amount of money Octopus Ventures currently manages to 1 bil euros, the company said Monday.

The new fund is 64% larger than the 140 million-euro fund the firm raised in 2016. The company said it has made 16 new investments in the past year, including those in British software firm Origami Energy and market research and intelligence startup Streetbees.

Past investments of Octopus’s include online property marketplace Zoopla, whose parent company is now publicly-listed in the UK with a market capitalisation of £1.5bil, Swiftkey, a predictive text tool that Microsoft bought in 2016 for an undisclosed amount, and Magic Pony, a video compression service that Twitter purchased for US$150mil that same year. It also has stakes in online travel company Secret Escapes and mail-order snack company Graze.

“The resources we now have at our disposal will better equip us to support tech disruptors of the future,” Alliott Cole, Octopus Venture’s chief executive officer, said in a statement.

“The pipeline of high potential, fast growth businesses has never been so strong and we are excited about the seed and early stage ventures we can help scale.” — Bloomberg