VC’s European emblem is raising $ 85 million for its original fund

EmblemA relatively new European VK company, based in Paris, announces the final closure of its first fund. Eighteen months after First closingThe EMBLEM team managed to provide a total of 80 million euros (about $ 85 million in current exchange rates).

This is not a small feat in the current funding environment. According to the latest Atomico report on European technology, in 2024, Financing of enterprises fell for the third consecutive yearS One of the main reasons for this is that the acquisitions and IPO are not happening at the moment.

As a result, VC as an investment category is less attractive than before. Several VC companies are struggling to raise subsequent resources, despite the current boom in artificial intelligence, which could potentially be a huge investment opportunity.

But this did not prevent the emblem from reaching its hard cap – the maximum amount it originally set to raise. Founded by Bénédicte de Raphélis Soissan and Guillaume Durao, the duo had already made interesting investments as business angels before creating an emblem. They Invest in a Cryptocurrency Game of Trade ShrinkStarting Pets Dalmaand a cultivated meat company GourmeyLet’s name a few.

They wanted to go a step forward with a suitable VC company to emblem, a seed investment company that wanted to make 25 to 30 investments with its original fund. Ideally, they would prefer to lead or consist of seeds with tickets ranging from 500,000 to 3 million euros. But the company is ready to follow another lead investor, if there is a good opportunity.

The emblem has already invested in 16 startups since its first closure in March 2023. TechCrunch has covered several of them. Examples include:

• RotationPublic Procurement Tool and COUPA Competitor.
• The company for the mobile firstThe B2B Mobile App Studio, drawing inspiration from Voodoo and other User App Studio.
• ElsewhereA new material company using AI and laboratory automation to speed up research.
• TimeAn online trading platform like Shopify, but focuses exclusively on B2B transactions.

This is a varied portfolio when it comes to a focus zone, but also a geographical focus. “We made 16 investments. To give you an idea, there are eight of them in France, six in Nordics – Denmark, Sweden – and then we did one in the US and one in Italy, “de Raflis Soan told TechCrunch.

The main focus of the emblem remains on France and the ecosystem of Nordic Tech. It has more than 200 limited partners who have invested in the first fund, including family offices and technology entrepreneurs, such as Unity, Pleo, Qonto, 3Shape, Spredesk, Voodoo, Pennylane, Jobandtalent, Ledger and Zendesk. They compensate for more than half of the total.

The rest is collected by several funds of the fund, as well as commitments both by the EIFO (Danish sovereign fund) and BPIFRANCE (French Sovereign Fund). The emblem is already thinking of its next fund, which should be approximately the same size as this.

“Now we have a little time when we won’t need to be grown. So we’ll taste it. But you never want to be out of the market, “said de Raflis Soan. “So, since it takes you four years to unfold and we’re halfway through, it means that in a year we will have to start over.”