Surpassing fundraising targets, Fund II extends 468 Capital’s investment strategy throughout Europe and the United States
468 Capital, announced the closing of Fund II with approximately $400 million in capital commitments, currently the largest European Seed stage fund. The firm has now raised a total of $1.3 billion since its inception in 2020. Exceeding fundraising targets, Fund II will continue to expand 468 Capital’s strategy of investing in companies with global ambitions within Europe and the United States. Fund II is focused on timely and lasting technologies, pushing capital into companies focused on AI and automation, software, as well as marketplaces and consumer.
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Within these broader verticals, the emerging MLOps category is a key area of focus for the firm. “The number of machine learning experiments run globally is increasing exponentially, and the need for a software stack that serves engineers and researchers is more pressing than ever. With this latest fund, we’re keenly focused on a few emerging areas, MLOps being one of them,” said Florian Leibert, Managing Partner at 468 Capital. “Additionally, we see the commercialization of open source software within the enterprise continue at an accelerated pace and are big proponents of the open source business model as showcased by our investments in QuestDB, Iterative.ai, ActivLoop, Earthly.dev, among others.”
The firm is also a thought leader in the emerging quick commerce space which targets the impatient consumer. “Consumers increasingly expect goods and services delivered almost instantly. A trend that started in food delivery expanded to the grocery sector in recent years, and is now spreading to other verticals, including consumer goods/brands, pharma and more. With a habit-forming customer experience, these businesses will continue to take away significant market share from legacy competitors, similar to how the wave of now-established eCommerce players did a decade ago. This is another key area of focus for Fund II,” said Alexander Kudlich, Managing Partner, who led the firm’s investments in Zapp, Arive and Mayd, among others.
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Supporting the most ambitious entrepreneurs from day 0 through exit
468 Capital is led by Managing Partners Alexander Kudlich, Florian Leibert and Ludwig Ensthaler. Together the leadership team has a decades-long history of starting, co-creating and leading successful technology companies such as HelloFresh, FoodPanda, Mesosphere and others, with combined market capitalization and valuations of over $50 billion. 468 Capital’s experienced investment team also includes partners Philipp Seifert, previously of Sapphire Ventures and Goldman Sachs, and Bernhard Janke, previously of LEA Partners and GFC.
Since its founding in 2020, 468 Capital has created opportunities by launching and scaling businesses together with exceptional entrepreneurs. The firm’s first fund, Fund I, was the largest first-time VC fund in European history with $200 million raised. The firm has now made over 50 investments, notably Razor Group, Zapp, Arive, Vectornator, Superchat and Rapid Robotics. 468 Capital also successfully launched two SPACs in the past year. The first, a $340 million SPAC combined with a $120 million PIPE, to acquire Tonies, a cloud-connected kid’s audio entertainment business, resulting in the best performing European SPAC with a 0.02% redemption rate. The second SPAC recently raised $250 million and is now trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange with plans to target a business combination in the consumer technology or cloud software sector.
“Europe is the fastest-growing geography for technology investments. 468 Capital uniquely combines an understanding of deep-tech as well as its commercialization, making us the go-to fund for European entrepreneurs,” said Ludwig Ensthaler, Managing Partner at 468 Capital.
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