OTB Ventures announce their new $185m Fund 2
OTB Ventures announced that it has closed a $185 million significancly oversubscribed fund, to build and scale Europe’s most promising early-stage DeepTech startups. Fund 2 will be backed by the European Investment Fund (EIF), Isomer Capital, NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), Foundation for Polish Science, TDJ Venture, Snowflake co-Founder Marcin Zukowski and OnDean, the family office of the Founders of Relativity.
The dedicated Deep-Tech fund, which is the largest VC with roots in Central Eastern Europe, will invest in four core verticals across Europe;SpaceTech, Enterprise Automation & AI, Cybersecurity and FinTech Infrastructure. Mirroring the funding strategy of OTB Ventures’ Fund 1 and utilising the Partner’s strong track record for identifying winners in emerging technology sectors at an early stage, Fund 2 will be used predominantly for Series A investments, with a new up to 10% allocation for Seed funding to support the growth of promising ventures at their inception.
OTB Fund 2 will reserve more than 50% of its capital for follow-on investments to support additional funding rounds in the best-performing portfolio companies. OTB Ventures will continue to maintain meaningful minority stakes in its portfolio companies.
This announcement follows the first close of Fund 2 in November 2022. It has already made nine investments from the fund across the target sectors, three Series A and six Seed investments. This includes a Series A investment in productivity and task mining platform KYP.ai and Seed investments in AI enterprise automation startup akirolabs and enterprise database enrichment company Veridion.
It also follows a recent Seed investment in SEMRON, the Dresden-based startup that produces AI chips with the highest compute density, marking an increased focus for OTB Ventures in semiconductor technology. OTB Ventures has also strengthened its SpaceTech line up within its portfolio, having invested in space debris removal leader ClearSpace, Atmos Space Cargo, and Kurs Orbital, an Italian startup that aims to democratise in-the orbit servicing and space logistics markets.
Adam Niewiński, co-Founder and Managing Partner of OTB Ventures, said: We are proud to announce the successful closure of our latest fund, a testament to the enduring confidence our investors have shown in us. This achievement comes despite the market still being somewhat challenging, building on the proven success of Fund 1. Our new fund empowers us to further our mission of supporting disruptive DeepTech startups that are leveraging Europe’s outstanding tech talent pool – the biggest natural resource that our continent can offer.