Atomico team. Image: Hermione Hodgson
Stripe and Klarna backer Atomico has raised two funds to drive growth in the European tech start-up scene.
European venture capital firm Atomico has raised $1.24bn across two funds in its largest ever fundraise to continue fuelling start-ups.
The raise includes the $754m ‘Growth VI’ fund which aims to support companies from Series-B to pre-IPO and a $485m ‘Venture VI’ fund for companies in Series A or at seed stage.
This is more than a 50pc increase on its $820m raise under the Atomico V fund in 2020.
“European technology is coming of age,” said Atomico founder and CEO Niklas Zennström. “Meeting this opportunity requires ambition, hustle and commitment from founders, who need investors with the experience and perspective to see beyond market cycles.
“Our new funds bring them essential fire power to level up and achieve global scale – from Europe.”
Headquartered in London, Atomico has already made 21 investments into start-ups across Europe, including DeepL and Pelago under the new Growth VI fund and Neko Health, Dexory and Deeploi under the new Venture VI fund.
According to Atomico, one-in-six companies it has backed is currently valued at more than $1bn, including Irish-owned Stripe that reached a market valuation of $70bn earlier this year.
A report from Atomico last year valued the European technology ecosystem at $3tn, rivalling global competitors. Europe now captures close to 30pc of global early-stage funding and is creating more new companies than any other region.
The report showed that European VCs have consistently outperformed their US counterparts over the past two decades by at least matching, and in most cases, beating benchmarks from VCs across the pond as well as European buyout and public equities.
The data also showed that more companies are cropping up in Europe when compared to the US in the AI sector bringing much of the seed investment.
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