Atomico Boost European Tech Startups with $1.24 Billion
London — Atomico, the venture capital firm founded by Niklas Zennström, a Skype co-founder, has closed $1.24 billion in fresh capital to invest in up-and-coming European technology startups. This fund will be utilized for vital support to early-stage and especially scale-up companies at a time when Europe’s technology ecosystem starts to bounce back from a tough few quarters that have seen falling valuations and deep redundancies across much of the industry.
The company, Atomico, said that they have close 2 new funds: a $754 million fund for Series B matured startups to pre-IPO growth stages firms, and a $485 million fund for early-stage technology firms. In the process, this is part of Atomico’s sixth investment cycle and represents a significant leap from the $820 million it raised in 2020.
Europe’s tech industry has certainly seen better times in the recent years. After valuation surged with the pandemic just trailing the US and Asia, it venture funding levels drop to $45 billion this year from a record $82 billion last year. At the same moment, the number of strong private and public technology firms in Europe was more than $3 trillion for the first time ever in 2023.
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Despite the dual punches those events have dealt, Zennström is sanguine about the future: “European technology is coming of age. Founders with ambition, hustle and commitment need investors who can see beyond market cycles,” he said categorically. “Our new funds will provide the firepower needed for European startups to scale globally.”
Fintech companies, for example, Stripe and Klarna, also fall within Atomico’s portfolio, and the question was whether they might finally do an independent offering this year. Stripe, with a $70 billion valuation in an online payment powerhouse, recently completed a secondary sale; meanwhile, Klarna, the buy-now-pay-later service, had long been said to be considering going public after speaking with its investors.
Headline-grabbing exits are increasingly making investors hopeful that these will reopen the IPO window, surprisingly quiet this year, and set the stage for a flood of tech listings by 2025.
