Curiosity VC eyes EUR 75m fund close in 2023

Anastasia Gnezditskaia
07 July 2022

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Dutch venture capital firm Curiosity VC is aiming to hold a final close for its debut fund on a hard cap of up to EUR 75m next year, Managing Partner Herman Kienhuis told Unquote.

The fund, which has a EUR 50m target, was launched in 2021 and reached its first close in April with commitments from 55 LPs, he said, declining to indicate the amount raised so far.

The VC started its fundraising by targeting angel investors and has broadened its scope to also target institutional investors. It targets LPs among entrepreneurs with investments starting from EUR 250,000, said Kienhuis, who is a former managing director of KPN Ventures.

Curiosity targets companies that provide technologies related to applied AI in verticals, such as proptech, cybersecurity, legal tech or fintech, he said. It particularly welcomes companies that rely on AI built in the EU as opposed to technology borrowed from other countries, he noted. It is interested in targets that pursue a responsible approach to AI, with ethics policies that involve transparency, avoid misuse and conduct bias testing, he said.

Curiosity deploys investments in seed-stage to Series B rounds, Kienhuis said, and targets companies located in three emerging tech hubs in the EU: the Benelux, the Baltics and the Nordics. The fund is interested in targets that are at the very early stages of revenue generation and have some paying customers. It provides tickets that range from EUR 500,000-1.5m as an initial investment and can deploy up to EUR 3m-EUR 4m with follow-on rounds.

Curiosity aims to have a fund with a duration of eight to 10 years, with investments held between five and seven years. It plans to deploy the fund within four years and apart from deploying investments in startups, it also plans to make fund-to-fund investments in the future.

The fund plans to invest in 20 companies and has already backed three. The portfolio includes Estonian AI-based 3D content creation provider Alpha AR, Dutch AI company Deeploy, and Finnish proptech startup Freesi, an investment that it made earlier this month.

Headquartered in Amsterdam, Curiosity employs 12 people and plans to grow this to 20 in the near future, according to Kienhuis.