Eight Roads Ventures, a London-based global venture capital firm, is launching its fourth fund aimed at supporting European and Israeli innovation.
According to a press release, the new fund – Eight Roads’ largest for the region to date – has $450 million in its war chest and aims to cover projects in a broad range of sectors, including software-as-a-service, health tech, and fintech.
The team will take up to 20 promising scale-ups with product-market fit solutions under its wing, the company said, each of them in for a check of between $5 and $50 million. The new fund enters the expanded Eight Roads ecosystem, leveraging its vast global footprint, and puts the total capital under its stewardship at a whopping $8 billion.
The development comes as Eight Roads reaches deeper into the European-Israeli scene, which it entered over a decade ago with the first dedicated fund. As the region evolved into the bustling tech and innovation hub that it is today, Eight Roads has added a plethora of local bigwigs to its portfolio, including giants such as AppsFlyer, Cazoo, Fireblocks and Hibob. The company’s European-Israeli arm brings together a team of 20 seasoned investment professionals with rich industry expertise and a deep understanding of the regional scene.
The new fund is taking off amid a larger expansion of hi-tech venture capital, put into overdrive mode by the pandemic. As COVID-19 forced companies to move their operations online, the demand for solutions supporting and enabling the digital transformation shot up. This, in turn, made for an opening for VC companies to move into, investing record-high figures into promising projects across the globe.
The trend is very much on display in Europe, where venture investments have been on a steady rise for years. Throughout the previous year, European start-ups raised $41b. in investment, a record-shattering figure for the diverse regional scene, but 2021 brought the trend to a whole new level. In its first six months, the local scene raised $52.2b. – a gargantuan figure surpassing the entire fundraising in 2020.
Announcing the launch of the new fund, Davor Hebel, managing partner and head of Eight Roads Ventures Europe, hailed the “entrepreneurial energy and ambition” in the region that the new fund will be covering. “This additional capital enables us to continue helping ambitious founders scale, win and have a lasting impact on the way we live,” he said.
Oren Kaniel, CEO and cofounder of AppsFlyer, welcomed the announcement, sharing his company’s experience of working with Eight Roads, which accompanied the marketing analytics and attribution platform since it was a small 50-strong team with a big vision. “We couldn’t ask for a more supportive partner.”
Sharing his take on collaborating with Eight Roads, Alex Chesterman, CEO and founder of Cazoo, hailed the way its EU-Israeli team approached business. “They’re knowledgeable, experienced investors, with an international network, and can help European founders build global game-changing businesses,” he said.