Earlybird VC was one of the “OG” of the emergence of Berlin as a key global tech startup ecosystem 15 years ago. Founded in 1997, it’s gone on to back N26 and UiPath, among many others. And in the past four months, two more Earlybird portfolio companies have become unicorns: Aiven, a Finnish software company that combines open source with cloud infrastructure, and OneFootball, a German sports and soccer media platform.
It’s now closed its seventh early-stage fund at a hard cap of €350 million, making it one of the largest European early-stage funds, and the firm says it was oversubscribed. A couple of years ago Earlybird split into Earlybird West and East, with the latter taking on regions like Central Europe and Turkey. This new fund is anchored in the Digital West (as in Western Europe) investment team.
The Earlybird Digital West Fund VII will look at enterprise software, fintech and sustainability, with a particular focus on deep tech. Earlybird Digital West has made over 17 investments out of this new fund, and they include both existing and new portfolio companies such as Aleph Alpha, Deed, Finmid, Hive Technologies, HiveMQ, Marvel Fusion, MAYD, Remberg, Sikoia and ThingsTHINKING.
Hendrik Brandis, partner and co-founder at Earlybird said in a statement: “Our portfolio companies Isar Aerospace, Aleph Alpha, Marvel Fusion or SimScale show that deep tech startups are on the rise and stem from continuous work of scientific institutions across Europe. Our role is to offer these highly scientific young companies, besides our other focus sectors such as Fintech, Enterprise Software and Sustainability, commercialization and growth opportunities on a global scale, in order to make ground-breaking ideas available to society.”
Christian Nagel, partner and co-founder at Earlybird added: “We are grateful for the high-level of commitment and trust coming from our long-term investors, many of whom accompanied us along almost all our fund generations.”
Earlybird has had some other recent wins: the recent $900 million funding round for N26 — making its the second most valuable retail bank in Germany; and the rise of Isar Aerospace One, one of the best-funded space tech companies in Europe.