Runa Capital, which launched there in 2010, says it has raised $55 million towards its fourth fund, aiming for a hard cap of $250 million.
And after 12 years in the US, the normally Palo Alto-based VC says it is now relocating its HQ to Luxembourg, to re-focus its attention on the European market, as several other US VCs have done this year.
TechCrunch understands the move is in part motivated by the higher returns now available from European startups, a trend we’ve seen as other US VCs – such as Sequoia and Lightspeed – have opened European offices.
Runa’s partners will now be now spread across Luxembourg, London, Berlin, San Francisco, and Palo Alto.
The firm has also promoted principals Konstantin Vinogradov and Michael Fanfant to General Partners focusing on Europe and the USA, respectively.
The fourth fund will continue to focus on early-stage investments in enterprise software and deep tech, such as open-source software, machine learning, quantum computing startups, finance, education, and healthcare.
The first investments of the new fund include Barcelona-based embedded finance provider Hubuc, Paris-based open-source enterprise software developer OpenReplay, as well .
Founded by the teams behind the Acronis and Parallels software companies, Runa Capital has so far over 100 early-stage investments in Europe and North America.
Its portfolio consists of Mambu (valued at $5.5 billion), Nginx (acquired by F5 for $700M), Ecwid (acquired by Lightspeed for $500M), Acumatica (acquired by EQT), and Drchrono (acquired by EverCommerce).
To date, the fund has raised around $500M for its three early-stage funds and one “opportunity” VC fund.
In a statement Dmitry Chikhachev, General Partner and Co-founder at Runa Capital said: “Runa Capital has a tight-knit team and a track record of promoting our partners from within. Konstantin and Michael will bolster our push into the most exciting and promising areas.”
Indeed, new partner Vinogradov originally joined Runa Capital in 2012 as a Junior Analyst while Fanfant previously сo-founded fintech startup Octane Lending.
Runa Capital’s portfolio includes Nordic banker Nicolai Tangen and Andreas Gauger (CEO at OpenExchange).
Despite its Russian ethnicity in terms of founders, Runa hasn’t made any investments in Russia-based companies since 2012 and, in fact, issued a vehement statement last March openly criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Soviet-era-born technology entrepreneur Serguei Beloussov (who has since taken the name Serg Bell and Singaporean citizenship) founded Runa after starting Acronis, and has since gone on to also establish the Acronis Cyber Foundation which has partnered with UNICEF, built schools and educated migrants to Switzerland.
Runa Capital kicks off new fund as it joins the VC ‘Scramble for Europe’ by moving to Luxembourg by Mike Butcher originally published on TechCrunch
