On their website, the investors of Cherry Ventures published an open letter to founder. You are fed up with constantly hearing that the USA in the VC area has a long lead and that Europe is not a place for inventors, the letter says. “We don't buy it”-that's the Cherry investor. The Berlin VC is convinced that Europe has a strong basis, but needs a new innovation culture. Cherry's vision: The next large technology company-Europe's first trillion dollar company-is to be built here. In order to achieve this goal, Cherry Ventures wants round in the coming years 484 million euros ($ 500 million) invest. The capital for the Fifth funds have already collected. According to Handelsblatt information, the funds come from Europe and the USA, including funds from pension funds and universities.
Much of the fund volume flows in early phase startups to Series A-the heart of the Cherry strategy. Around 97 million euros ($ 100 million) flow into the so-called opportunity finds, which further supports the most successful portfolio companies from the early stage find from Series B.
Cherry Ventures was founded in 2012 by the former Zalando managers Filip Dames and Christian Meermann. The former Spotify Marketing Director Sophia Bendz has also been part of the management team since 2020. With offices in Berlin, Stockholm and London, the VC looks after a portfolio of more than 100 startups, including the Ki Startup Plato, Unicorn Forto and the Berlin Fintech Mondu. The current fund, Cherry Fund V, exceeds its predecessor from 2022 by 56 percent and is the largest fund in the history of Cherry Ventures.
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Billions of US VC invested in Europe
American investors also believe in Europe's future. The US VC General Catalyst announced a new, billion -dollar funds in October last year. The equivalent of 7.7 billion euros ($ 8 billion) wants US-VC, who took over the Berlin VC company La Famiglia in 2023, Invest in startups in the early development phases. Worldwide, but with a focus on the markets in the USA, Europe and India.
The money is spread over several pots: of the 7.7 billion euros ($ 8 billion), around 4.4 billion euros (4.5 billion dollars) are intended for the so-called “Core VC Fund” and thus for seed and growth financing. Another 1.45 billion euros ($ 1.5 billion) are intended for the so-called “creation strategy”, which is intended to help specifically experienced corporate founders to found new companies. The remaining 1.9 billion euros ($ 2 billion) flow into “separately managed accounts”, special investment vehicles that are typically designed for individual institutional LPs.
According to Hemant Taaneja, CEO of General Catalyst, the capital will be in the areas Artificial intelligence, defense, climate and energy, industry, healthcare and fintech invested. Taneja emphasized that the company rely on cooperation with ambitious entrepreneurs to Innovation and resistance to promote.
General Catalyst, founded in 2000, has already supported numerous large technology companies such as Airbnb, Instacart and Stripe and has increasingly oriented internationally through mergers, for example with La Famiglia in Europe and Venture Highway in India. General Catalyst currently manages over $ 30 billion in assets.
German donors follow up
Source: https://www.businessinsider.de/gruenderszene/business/cherry-ventures-500-millionen-dollar-fuer-europas-zukunft/
