French VC agency Daphni is saying the primary closing of its new fund, Daphni Blue. The agency has raised €200 million (round $215 million at present alternate charges). It expects to boost as a lot as €250 million ($270 million) by the tip of the 12 months.
Some of Daphni’s most exceptional previous investments embody Back Market, Swile, Hubcycle and Pasqal. Overall, the agency has invested in 70 European startups since 2015.
With its newest fund, Daphni plans to put money into one other 40 startups. Limited companions in Daphni Blue embody Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, Bpifrance, the European Investment Fund, PRO BTP and Swen Capital Partners.
“We need to ask ourselves how we can both differentiate ourselves, and support technologies or services that are sustainable when we invest in new projects,” founding companion Pierre-Eric Leibovici advised me.
“Because at the end of the day, there are cycles, and we can see that at a given moment, either the market consolidates, or it is dominated by American players, or in the end, there wasn’t enough of a breakthrough to begin with.”
While most VC companies point out synthetic intelligence in each different sentence, Daphni desires to place an emphasis on science (at massive) as the principle issue for the following wave of innovation: life sciences, biology, physics, chemistry and arithmetic.
“When you talk about quantum computing, well, quantum computing is fundamental physics combined with hardware and software,” Leibovici mentioned. He additionally mentioned that enormous language fashions are arithmetic breakthroughs firstly.
As a consequence, Daphni is recruiting completely different profiles to affix the crew. For occasion, a PhD graduate and a PhD scholar are on the funding crew.
“There’s another element that is a new trend. The new generation of researchers are much more open to commercializing their fundamental and applied research, because they see all their friends around them starting companies,” Leibovici mentioned.
While French universities are setting apart a portion of their finances to draw American researchers, Daphni says that it didn’t select to refocus on basic science due to that.
“It’s a coincidence. We launched this long before there was this trend,” Leibovici mentioned. Of course, Daphni is open to investing in American researchers who’re beginning a startup in Europe.
Up subsequent, Daphni should deploy this newly raised capital and show that it has discovered an environment friendly funding technique. “Raising is not an end in itself. What is an end in itself is distributing returns, and therefore exits,” Leibovici mentioned.
