Alliance Venture Spring holds first close on NOK 510m

The Oslo-based vehicle, which was oversubscribed, will focus on Norway-based IT start-ups, but will also consider international targets.

Alliance Venture Spring launched in August last year when Norwegian early-stage investment firms Alliance Venture and Springfondet joined forces. At the time, it announced the decision to base itself at Oslo Innovation Park in order to cooperate with Oslo University and local innovation clusters.

Earlier this month, Alliance Venture joined a $3.5m round for Outracks Technologies, a Springfondet-backed developer of cross-platform content creation tools.

Alliance Venture Spring used Optimum, a financial advisory firm, to top up the fund through a feeder fund.

Investors
Commitments to the fund came from a mix of new and existing LPs.

Innovation Norway, a state-owned fund, was the largest investor in the vehicle contributing NOK 250m (€29.8m). Alliance Venture also received commitments from institutional, private and strategic investors including telecommunications company Telenor and mobile phone software developer Opera Software.

Investments
Alliance Venture Spring will focus on early-stage IT companies, in particular the mobile internet market. It is intended to support Norwegian entrepreneurs looking to capitalise on their ideas.

The fund will typically make initial investments of between NOK 2-5m, with NOK 20-30m reserved for follow-up funding.

People
Jan-Erik Hæreid is managing partner responsible for Alliance Venture Spring. Finn Kristian Aamodt is managing director at Innovation Norway. Lars Boilesen is CEO of Opera.

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