Provides $ 215 million for its third fund

French VC company Daphne announces the first closure of its new Daphni Blue Fund. The company has raised € 200 million (about $ 215 million in current exchange rates). He expects to raise up to 250 million euros ($ 270 million) by the end of the year.

Some of Daphni’s most notable investments include Back Market, Swile, Hubcycle and Pasqal. Overall, the company has invested in 70 European startup companies since 2015.

With his latest fund, Daphne plans to invest in another 40 start -ups. Limited partners at Daphni Blue include Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, Bpifrance, the European Investment Fund, Pro BTP and Swen Capital Partners.

“We have to ask ourselves how we can distinguish ourselves and support technologies or services that are sustainable when investing in new projects,” found the founder Pierre-Eric Leibovici.

“Since there are cycles at the end of the day and we can see that at some point either the market consolidated or it is dominated by American players, or in the end there was not enough breakthrough to start with.”

While most VK companies mention artificial intelligence in any other sentence, Daphne wants to focus on science (as a whole) as a major factor in the next wave of innovation: life sciences, biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics.

“When you talk about quantum calculations, the quantum calculations are a major physics combined with hardware and software,” Leibovichi said. He also said that large language models are mathematical breakthroughs above all.

As a result, Daphne is recruiting different profiles to join the team. For example, a doctoral student and doctoral student are in the investment team.

“There is another element that is a new trend. The new generation of researchers are much more open to commercialization of their basic and applied research because they see all their friends around them, starting companies,” Leibovichi said.

While French universities are setting aside Part of their budget for attracting American researchers, Daphne says he has not chosen to reorientate himself on basic science because of this.

“This is a coincidence. We started so much before there was this trend,” Leibovichi said. Of course, Daphni is open to invest in US researchers who are launching in Europe.

Daphni will then have to unleash this new capital and prove that he has found an effective investment strategy. “Raising is not an end in itself. What is in itself is the spread of return and therefore goes out,” Leibovichi said.