Launch of new fund of funds to support European tech champions

Launch of new fund of funds to support European tech champions

Five EU member states and the European Investment Bank Group (European Investment Bank, European Investment Fund) have signed the European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI) mandate, a fund of funds that will channel much-needed late-stage growth capital to promising European innovators.

ETCI will deepen Europe’s scale-up venture capital (VC) markets by bridging gaps in financing availability, especially for companies seeking to raise amounts of over €50 million. It will help create an asset class for European institutional investors to diversify their portfolios, thus maintaining a continuous flow of funding to European scale-ups. Such positive self-sustained dynamic in the European high-tech landscape will nurture home-grown innovation and entrepreneurship. 

Europe’s tech start-ups often do not have sufficient capital to compete on a global scale and are pushed to relocate overseas. Closing this scale-up gap could create many highly skilled jobs and boost growth.

ETCI – the cornerstone of the Pan-European Scale Up Initiative unveiled in February 2022 in Paris during a summit organised under the French Presidency of the Council of the EU – will pool public resources from participating member states and the EIB Group to make significant investments into large-scale VC funds, which will, in turn, provide growth financing to European tech champions.

ETCI has secured commitments from Spain (€1 billion), Germany (€1 billion), France (€1 billion), Italy (€150 million) and Belgium (€100 million) during the initial subscription period. The EIB Group has deployed an additional €500 million, thus bringing the grand total to €3.75 billion at this stage. 

Click below to share this article

Browse our latest issue

Intelligent CIO Europe

View Magazine Archive