EQT closes Ventures II on €660m

The firm stated that €620m out of the total raised would be fee-paying. The remaining €40m has been committed by team members of EQT Ventures, Unquote understands. 

The fund's predecessor, EQT Ventures I, closed on €566m in 2016 after less than a year on the road. EQT Ventures I notably invested in Finland-based mobile games company Small Giant Games, which it sold to social games developer Zynga in a deal valued at $700m late last year.

Like its predecessor, EQT Ventures II will make use of Motherbrain, EQT's proprietary artificial intelligence system, to source some of its investments.

Motherbrain is managed as a startup inside EQT, and five portfolio companies of EQT Ventures I, have been sourced by Motherbrain so far – Peakon, Handshake, AnyDesk, Warducks and Standard Cognition. They represent around 10% of the whole portfolio, but Motherbrain is expected to help source a greater number of businesses for EQT Ventures II, a spokesperson for EQT confirmed. 

EQT Ventures' team is based in Stockholm, Amsterdam, London, San Francisco and Berlin. 

Investors
EQT's second-generation venture fund is backed by pension funds, insurance companies, financial institutions, foundations and family offices, among others. Investors are based in Europe, the US and Asia.

Investments
The fund will back startups based in Europe, typically at series-A and series-B funding rounds, but also invest in US-headquartered startups keen to expand in Europe. In the latter case, EQT will typically take part in series-B and series-C rounds. The fund will provide equity tickets in the €1-75m range. 

In the previous fund, eight out of the 46 investments were in US-based companies, Unquote has learned. 

EQT Ventures II has already been deployed in Einride ($25m series-A), Beat81 (€6.4m series-A) and Standard Cognition ($35m series-B).

People
EQT Partners – Hjalmar Winbladh (partner); Christian Sinding (CEO).

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