Venture capital firm Accel announced Tuesday that it has raised a $650 million fund to invest in early-stage companies in Europe and Israel, with a focus on artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.
The new fund will be Accel’s eighth since opening its London office in 2000. Accel has so far supported more than 200 companies in 20 countries in the region and still has investments in more than 100 companies.
“It takes about three years to invest the fund, and then the life of a fund is typically about 12 years,” Harry Nelis, a partner at Accel, told Reuters, adding that Accel would invest in 25 to 30 new companies.
Accel, known for its early investments in companies such as Meta and Dropbox, had also invested in major European companies such as Deliveroo, Spotify and Supercell.
The European and Israeli venture capital market is growing rapidly, with investments of $66 billion in 2023, compared to $150 billion in the United States, according to Dealroom data. In comparison, investments amounted to only $1.1 billion in 2003, compared to $17 billion in the United States.
“AI is going to be a major platform shift that will likely continue over the next 10 years and we plan to place a fair number of bets on AI companies,” Nelis said.
Although interesting AI companies can emerge anywhere in Europe, London and Paris have become hubs for AI development, he said. “London thanks to DeepMind and Paris thanks to Facebook AI Research (FAIR). »
DeepMind, based in London, is an AI research laboratory that is now owned by Alphabet. Meta opened FAIR in Paris in 2015 and became its hub for AI advancements.
(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm; editing by Alison Williams)
The subjects
Cyber
AssurTech
Europe
Data driven
Artificial intelligence
Funding
Israel
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