Venture capital (VC) firm Index Ventures has announced a whopping $1.65 billion in funds as it targets global startups at various stages.
The money is split across two pots — $650 million for the firm’s ninth venture fund (aimed at earlier stage startups), and $1 billion for its fourth growth fund (geared toward “scale ups”).
Index Ventures’ previous fund closed at $550 million in 2016, while its third growth fund closed at around $706 million a year earlier.
The road leading to these latest funds was a short one, according to the company, which said it made the decision to raise the new funds during its annual meeting in April and had secured all of the aforementioned cash by the end of June.
Founded in 1996, Index Ventures today claims dual headquarters in London and San Francisco. It has backed a number of big-name companies through the years, including Etsy, Facebook, Flipboard, King, Skype, Slack, SoundCloud, TransferWise, and Zendesk. In the past few months alone, Index Ventures has claimed four notable exits, with Sweden’s iZettle selling to PayPal for $2.2 billion, Dropbox floating on the Nasdaq, Adyen going public on European stock exchange Euronext, and Zuora selling its shares on the New York Stock Exchange.
Index Ventures’ new funds are the latest in a spate of funds to emerge from VC firms with ties to Europe. Last week, Berlin-based Earlybird closed a fresh €175 million ($204 million) fund focused on early-stage “deep tech” startups across Europe, which came shortly after Highland Europe announced a $540 million growth-stage fund. Elsewhere, U.K.-based Kindred Capital closed its inaugural fund at around $112 million, Seedcamp announced its fourth fund at $81 million, and U.K.-focused IQ Capital raised a $165 million fund for early-stage transformative startups
Source: VentureBeat
