Spain’s Kfund Raises $75 Million for AI and Data Projects
Spanish venture capital (VC) firm Kfund has raised $75 million to fund tech projects.
The company announced the new fund Monday (June 17), saying it would help support founders in Europe working “with foundational technologies” defined here as “data plays,” “platform layers,” and artificial intelligence (AI).
“With a target size of €70 million, with K3 we will continue to invest in southern Europe alongside the best founders, to help them lay the foundations for future growth thanks to our experience as founders and executives of technology companies, and with the unique ability in the region to support them from pre-seed to Series B through our family of funds,” Kfund said.
The company notes in its presentation that, as the market matures, successful companies tend to be more B2B focused than consumer focused.
Between 2012 and 2017, just 28% of unicorns — startups valued at more than $1 billion — in the U.K., Germany and France were B2B “tech enabled” companies. During the next five-year period, that figure had shifted to 60%.
Kfund’s announcement comes on the heels of news earlier this month that tech investments in Europe were seeing a turnaround after a long downturn.
A report by the Financial Times (FT) notes that private tech investor Creandum, which has invested in Klarna and Spotify, had unveiled a $544 million fund. Creandum’s fund came together “in record time,” general partner Carl Fritjofsson told the FT.
“There is a dramatic change in the sentiment, appetite and activity across the industry,” he said.
Last year saw a steep drop in investment in the tech sector in Europe. In its yearly State of European Tech report in late 2023 British venture capital firm Atomico projected that funds raised by Europe’s tech startups would come to around $45 billion, compared to the $82 billion raised in 2022.
Meanwhile, PYMNTS recently examined the way AI is helping VC firms make investment decisions by quickly analyzing massive amounts of data on startups and market trends.
“The usefulness of AI in venture capital is about augmenting human capabilities with machine intelligence to sift through the noise and identify genuine opportunities with precision,” Steve Brotman, the founder and managing partner of growth equity firm Alpha Partners, told PYMNTS.
“With AI, we can analyze market trends, startup performance metrics, and other critical data points at a scale and speed that’s simply unattainable for a team of human analysts alone,” he added. “This improves efficiency and fundamentally enhances the ability to make informed, strategic decisions by providing a depth of insight into potential investments that were previously unimaginable.”
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