BERLIN & SAN FRANCISCO– 468 Capital, today announced the closing of Fund II with approximately $400 million in capital commitments, currently the largest European Seed stage fund. The firm has now raised a total of $1.3 billion since its inception in 2020. Exceeding fundraising targets, Fund II will continue to expand 468 Capital’s strategy of investing in companies with global ambitions within Europe and the United States. Fund II is focused on timely and lasting technologies, pushing capital into companies focused on AI and automation, software, as well as marketplaces and consumer.
Within these broader verticals, the emerging MLOps category is a key area of focus for the firm. “The number of machine learning experiments run globally is increasing exponentially, and the need for a software stack that serves engineers and researchers is more pressing than ever. With this latest fund, we’re keenly focused on a few emerging areas, MLOps being one of them,” said Florian Leibert, Managing Partner at 468 Capital. “Additionally, we see the commercialization of open source software within the enterprise continue at an accelerated pace and are big proponents of the open source business model as showcased by our investments in QuestDB, Iterative.ai, ActivLoop, Earthly.dev, among others.”
The firm is also a thought leader in the emerging quick commerce space which targets the impatient consumer. “Consumers increasingly expect goods and services delivered almost instantly. A trend that started in food delivery expanded to the grocery sector in recent years, and is now spreading to other verticals, including consumer goods/brands, pharma and more. With a habit-forming customer experience, these businesses will continue to take away significant market share from legacy competitors, similar to how the wave of now-established eCommerce players did a decade ago. This is another key area of focus for Fund II,” said Alexander Kudlich, Managing Partner, who led the firm’s investments in Zapp, Arive and Mayd, among others.
