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Atomico has closed two new funds totalling $1.24bn to back startups in Europe. It’s a huge amount of money, and Atomico’s biggest fundraise to date — but it falls just short of being the biggest pot of venture capital focused solely on Europe; fellow London-based firm Balderton raised $1.3bn across two new funds last month.
Atomico set out to raise $1.35bn across the two funds, which were incorporated in 2021, according to US regulatory filings; although the firm says it began fundraising in 2022.
“As you know, the market has slowed down in recent years and we have not been immune nor are we alone. Combined, these funds are more than 50% larger than our previous Fund V. This shows that LPs continue to believe in European tech and continue to believe in Atomico,” an Atomico spokesperson told Sifted.
The capital is divided between a $485m early-stage fund that’ll focus on Series A, and a $754m growth fund targeting Series B to pre-IPO. SEC filings show that Atomico was originally targeting a $600m early-stage fund, meaning it closed 80% of its target.
Atomico says its LPs include the EIF, via its European Tech Champions Initiative, and pension funds, insurers, sovereign wealth funds, family offices and former founders. PitchBook lists the Japan Investment Corporation, public pension funds Oxfordshire County Council Pension Fund, Devon Pension Fund and AP Fonden, along with insurance company Mandatum Life, as LPs. Atomico told Sifted that 75% of the capital in the new funds came from existing investors.
Partnership changes
Since the last fund — its fifth, of $820m, raised in 2020 — Atomico’s lost five investment partners and gained seven.
Hiro Tamura, who worked at the firm for 15 years, left in 2022; it was reported by Forbes that he had been “dismissed” following “complaints from staff over his management style”. He’s now raising his own fund. Sophia Bendz, who set up Atomico’s angel programme, left in 2020 to join early-stage VC Cherry, while Niall Wass left his partner role in 2021 and is now an advisor. Siraj Khaliq has also moved from a partner to an advisor role. Atomico also confirmed that Carter Adamson, the firm’s first full-time US partner, is no longer with the firm.
Investment partners on the venture team — which has been separated from the growth team for these new funds — are Ben Blume, Irina Haivas, Terese Hougaard, Sasha Vidiborskiy and Andreas Helbig. On the growth side, the investment partners are Laura Connell, Luca Eisenstecken and Hillary Ball.
Several other members of the investment team have also left in the past two years, including Sasha Astafyeva, Daphne Dovermann, Anna Linderum Thomsen and Rowen Pham. Anu Adebajo and Mathieu Marc, who tells Sifted he left in the summer to build a startup, are no longer listed on Atomico’s website as team members. Atomico declined to comment on individual circumstances.
The portfolio
Atomico, which was founded in 2006, has now made more than 155 investments. Its portfolio includes more than a dozen unicorns, including AI translation startup DeepL, fintech giants Stripe and Klarna and mobile games company Supercell.
Notable exits have included delivery company Wolt (acquired by DoorDash for €7bn in an all-stock transaction in 2022), employee feedback platform Peakon (acquired by Workday for $700m in cash in 2021) and flying taxi company Lilium, which listed on the Nasdaq via a SPAC in 2021 but has since seen its share price drop more than 90%.
British chip company Graphcore, once a star of the Atomico portfolio, was acquired by SoftBank in July for less than the amount invested in the startup to date (which is nearly $700m); while vertical farming startup Infarm, whose $100m round in 2019 was led by Atomico, was declared insolvent last year.
Atomico has made 21 investments from the new funds so far. The growth fund participated in DeepL’s $300m fundraise in May, co-led GenAI healthcare assistant Corti’s $60m Series B in September last year and led a $58m Series C for digital addiction treatment clinic Pelago (formerly Quit Genius).
The early-stage fund’s investments include preventative healthcare startup Neko Health, work benefits platform Ben and AI security startup Lakera.
