British venture capital firm uses AI to seek out startups across Europe
A London-based venture capital firm that uses artificial int elligence to find promising startups across Europe said on Tuesday it had raised €53 million (£46.6 million) for its biggest fund to date.
Inreach Ventures was founded by Roberto Bonanzinga and J ohn Mesrie, both previously at Balderton Capital, and Ben Smith, formerly at Microsoft’s t eamworking tool Yammer, Reuters wrote.
Inreach has spent three years developing its own proprietary A I technology to discover, evaluate and support its investments.
B onanzinga said European startups were scattered across the c ontinent, meaning that many e arly stage companies did not c ome to the attention of firms based in major cities like London.
H e said Inreach Ventures was using AI to sift through and evaluate data, for example from blogposts and similar sources, to identify early-stage companies looking for their first institutional investor.
“Entrepreneurs can found companies anywhere in Europe, f rom Helsinki to Barcelona, from Warsaw to Rome, and yet many fail to get noticed at the right time,” he said.
“As European venture capitalists, we need a new approach that i s distinct and tailored to deal with this geographic fragmentat ion and economic reality. We believe the only way to achieve this is through a software-based approach, powered by AI.”
Inreach had invested in eight s tartups from across Europe since it was founded in 2015, he said, including Lithuania-based m arketplace startup Oberlo, w hich was subsequently acquired by Shopify.
The fund was particularly interested in startups in consumer i nternet, software-as-a-service and marketplaces, with typical investments of €500,000 to €2 million, he said.