Niklas Zennstrom, CEO of Atomico and co-founder of Skype.
Simon Dawson | Bloomberg | Getty Pictures
LONDON – Atomico, an early investor in prime European know-how corporations from Stripe to Klarna, on Monday introduced the launch of two new funds price $1.24 billion to assist rising and growth-stage startups within the sector.
The launch of Atomico’s sixth wave of recent funds, consisting of a $754 million growth-stage fund for startups elevating Sequence B for pre-IPO funding and a $485 million early stage fund, marks a breath of life for a European tech business reeling of a drop in valuations and mass layoffs.
Enterprise funding for European tech startups will nearly halve to $45 billion by 2023, in comparison with $82 billion the 12 months earlier than, based on a report from Atomico written final 12 months. The decline was a reversal from pre-pandemic years when tech valuations soared, Atomico stated on the time.
The mixed worth of all personal and listed know-how corporations in Europe can be greater than $3 trillion by 2023. In 2022, Europe’s tech sector noticed $400 billion disappear from its complete market capitalization amid a pointy decline in know-how valuations.
The scale of Atomico’s new funds represents a rise of greater than 50% from the $820 million it raised for its final funding spherical, Fund V, in 2020. The corporate, which was based in 2006 by co-founder Niklas Zennström by MicrosoftThe Skype-owned video calling app has supported among the most well-known corporations within the European tech scene.
“European know-how is maturing. Seizing this chance requires ambition, dedication and dedication from founders, who want buyers with the expertise and perspective to see past market cycles,” Zennström stated in a press release on Monday.
“Knowledge exhibits that Europe is main the world early on with a wealth of recent startups. Our new funds give them important firepower to degree up and obtain international scale – from Europe,” he added to.
The brand new fundraising comes as two of Atomico’s key portfolio corporations, Stripe and Klarna, are surrounded by hypothesis about upcoming inventory market listings. Stripe, the web funds big, was final valued at $70 billion in a secondary inventory sale and has lengthy been seen as a possible IPO candidate.
Klarna, in the meantime, is discussing a secondary share sale with buyers to supply them with liquidity forward of a extremely anticipated preliminary public providing, an individual aware of the matter instructed CNBC final month. The identical supply stated on the time that Klarna’s valuation on the open secondary market was within the tens of billions.
Exits are good for enterprise capital and personal fairness funds as a result of they supply the chance to money out and make income on fairness investments, a lot of which are sometimes held for a decade or extra. Many main European know-how listings have been lacking this 12 months, however buyers are hopeful that 2025 would be the 12 months when the IPO interval reopens.
