Atomico concluded its fourth round of raising funds with $765 million.
Atomico has revealed that it has closed its fourth round of raising funds after managing to gather $765 million, which is among the highest venture capital funds in Europe. The company initially started its latest round almost one year ago, revealed through its SEC filings.
The $765 fund is a significant increase over its third fund round which only managed to raise $476 million back in 2013. What is particularly interesting with its very successful fundraising round is that it highlights a key difference between European companies and those in the US, where limited partnership firms are often pressured in committing to top funds.
Atomico’s successful round of funding was due to the stakes the company has in a number of prominent endeavors and other firms, which appealed to a lot of investors it seems. Atomico has shares in Rovio, the Finnish game developer which produced Angry Birds, Klarna, a payments company, as well as GoEuro, a travel site.
The company further benefited from a major transaction back in 2013, when Monsanto acquired Climate Corp. for around $1 billion. The following years was quite successful for Atomico again, when Supercell managed to sell a majority stake to Tencent, China, for $8.6 billion.
Mattias Ljungman, a general partner at Atomico, stated that unlike the U.S. which has a long tradition of investing in various venture capital firms, Europe is only now starting to see the appeal. However, once the benefits of investing in these firms became evident, it led to a large amount of capital being deployed, that even surpassed the US.
Atomico, which was originally founded by the co-founder of Skype, Niklas Zennstrom, has now become of the best-funded firms in Europe. The company has its central office in London but has a lot of people on the ground in major cities across the world such as New York, Beijing, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, and Stockholm.
Atomico offers an extensive list of service to its portfolio companies, such as an in-house value creation team. This team includes around seven partners who mainly advise on marketing, communications, and other domains of interest. Atomico hopes to see that Europe’s venture capital reach the same breakout speed as in the US.
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Deborah Campbell
