AM Ventures holds EUR 100m final close for debut fund

The GP announced the first close of the fund in March 2021, as reported.

Meister Law and Poellath provided legal advice on the fund, as previously reported.

AM Ventures was formed in 2015 and started as a quasi-family office of the Langer family (headed by Hans Langer, a 3D printing industry veteran and chairman of industrial 3D printing business EOS) before launching its first institutional fund in January 2021, as reported.

Following the final close of its debut fund, the VC is confident of finding further opportunities to deploy its capital, in part due to the role of 3D printing in addressing supply chain issues. “Valuations are under pressure, which is a challenge for some companies raising funds at the moment, although it can also be a good opportunity,” Arno Held, co-founder of AM Ventures, said. “In the industrial additive manufacturing space, when global supply chains are under tremendous pressure and everyone is trying to digitise the sending of goods, 3D printing is actually among the beneficiaries of the situation. So the impact on valuations and volumes raised is not as dramatic here as it is in other industries at the moment.”

This is bringing more widespread interest to the sector, according to Held. “We are seeing more interest from them, partly because the past year has shown that 3D printing is one of the key technologies to fight global warming: it can produce heat exchangers, electromobility component, and filters to clean seawater,” he said. “Industrial tech and hardware tech VCs have realised this, and we are proud of the coinventors we have attracted.”

VCs who have joined AM Ventures in follow-on funding rounds for its companies include BtoV Partners, which backed a EUR 2.5m Series A round for cold metal fusion specialist Headmade Materials in February 2022, according to Unquote Data. Investors including UVC Partners and Verve Ventures backed a USD 6.9m Series A round for 3D printing software developer 3YourMind in April 2021.

ESG is an area that the VC is continuing to develop, according to Held. “We are working on this as we speak, making sure that we can show the impact of our investments,” he said. “With the industry understanding that we have and the technology that we are supporting, we can have a good sustainable impact.”

Investors
Asset manager KGAL and the Langer Group were the two anchor investors in the fund at the time of its first close. The GP itself and the Schulte Group have also committed to the fund.

As of the final close, around 80%-90% of the fund’s LP base is made up of family offices from central, western and southern Europe, Held told Unquote.

“At the very beginning, we were of the assumption that our LP base would be made up of large corporations with a strategic interest in the fund,” held said. “But we have got a lot more long-term-oriented family offices and HNWIs on board who were attracted to our idea.”

Investments
The fund invests initial tickets of EUR 500,000- EUR 3m, with up to EUR 5m available per company, Held said. The fund typically takes 10%-25% stakes on initial entry; its current portfolio is generally in the 17%-20% range, he told Unquote. The fund expects to make 20-25 investments in total, as reported.

Although the fund has a specific sector focus on industrial additives and 3D printing, it has a broad geographical focus. “We did not want to limit ourselves regionally – we have to look globally for the best and most dynamic startups,” Held said. “There is a strong level of activity coming from Asia, around 40% of the startups we have scouted in the past year or so are from here. The fund’s portfolio could be 35% Asia, 35% Europe, and 30% from the US once the investment phase of the fund is over.”

AM Ventures has 17 investments in its portfolio, all of which are part of the fund. “Right now, our dealflow is bursting,” Held said. “With lots of funds keeping their powder dry, sitting and waiting to see how things are developing, a lot of startups are flooding in our direction as they are struggling to raise funds and find investors who understand the industry and its dynamics.”

“We have 60% of the fund left to deploy, and we want to save some of these resources for our existing portfolio,” Held said. “But we could easily make two to three new investments this year, with three per year for the next few years. We expect to be fully deployed in a couple of years’ time, so it would be two to three years until the next fund is up and running.”

As for the GP’s existing portfolio, its companies are continuing to raise follow-on rounds. “Sintratech and Spectroplast are currently raising funds, so we are looking for new investors to join us,” Held told Unquote.

Switzerland-headquartered silicone 3D printing business Spectroplast raised a EUR 1.38m seed funding round from AM Ventures in August 2019, according to Unquote Data. The latest funding round for Switzerland-headquartered selective laser sintering (SLS) printing systems producer Sintratech took place in April 2020, when it secured CHF 5.2m from AM Ventures and Extorel.

People
AM Ventures – Arno Held (co-founder).

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