EU props up €90B investors club to plug tech funding gap

Brussels has launched a club of investors in a bid to lure more money to high-risk tech ventures.

The investors could be tapped to coinvest alongside a fund the European Commission launched in 2021. The fund focuses on companies working on unproven, research-heavy technologies, which often struggle to attract the necessary funding to bring their products to the market.

The “trusted investors” network was launched in Athens on Monday by outgoing European innovation chief Iliana Ivanova.

Seventy-one investors joined the club, representing more than €90 billion in assets, according to a Commission official. Among the investors is the NATO Innovation Fund.

The official added that among the investors are United Kingdom-based Atomico (backer of European fintech companies such as Stripe and Klarna) and Sweden’s EQT, as well as state-funded investors like French Bpifrance and Dutch Invest-NL.

Last week, a Commission expert group painted a grim picture of the chances of scaling tech in Europe.

“The EU is comparatively weaker than the U.S. and China with regard to the uptake, commercialization and scaling of new technologies,” the expert group, chaired by former Portuguese tech minister Manuel Heitor, wrote in an evaluation report of Horizon Europe, the bloc’s flagship R&D program.

Europe’s technology gap is the Continent’s “single biggest long-term challenge,” veteran German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger said in an interview with POLITICO.

The Commission’s approach to plug the tech funding gap differs from earlier efforts.

With its 2021 fund, the Commission takes on actual ownership stakes in tech companies through a proxy, a sharp breakaway from its regular practice of issuing grants or supporting private tech investors.

Since the fund launched, it has invested nearly €1 billion in more than 250 European startups. Private investors added another €4 billion in coinvestments. The new club is meant to boost that number significantly.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in her program for the next mandate vowed to “expand” the initiative further.

It will be a priority for the designated startups commissioner, Bulgaria’s Ekaterina Zaharieva.