BrightCap Ventures announces first close of new €60M fund to back founders from this region: Know more  

Sofia, Bulgaria-based BrightCap Ventures, a venture capitalist, announced on Tuesday that it has completed the first close of its new fund, Fund II, which is targeting €60M.

BrightCap II is funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU with the financial backing of the Government of Bulgaria under the Bulgaria Recovery and Resilience Plan, and with the financial support of the Government of Romania under the Romania Recovery Equity Fund.

The Bulgarian VC will use the capital to invest in founders from Rising Southeastern Europe – a region home to outstanding tech talent and an increasing number of global success stories in recent years.

Georgi Mitov, Managing Partner at BrightCap Ventures, comments, “BrightCap II is an exciting new step for us – larger scale fund with a wider scope and even greater ambitions than our first. At the same time, our philosophy of working with deeply technical founders with domain expertise and global reach from day one hasn’t changed. It keeps us grounded in the AI era where opportunities seem everywhere, but lasting technology winners can be built by few.”

BrightCap’s Fund II

Founded by a diverse team, BrightCap aims to help founders from Rising SEE scale into Western European and US markets.

The VC’s Fund II aims to invest in unique, globally scalable tech companies from Southeastern Europe in three priority sectors: Future of Work, Digital Health, and Fintech. 

Initial investments will range from €0.4M to €3M, targeting pre-seed and seed stages.

BrightCap II is one of the very few VCs with a female majority among its General Partners. Diversity of experience, ideas, and perspectives is at the core of BrightCap’s decision-making process, claims the company.

The fund combines public capital, managed by the EIF, as well as more than 30 per cent of private capital from new and existing individual and corporate investors.

The Fund II is the first VC fund to have attracted RRF funds from two countries, Bulgaria and Romania.

Elina Halatcheva, Managing Partner at BrightCap Ventures, says “We are thrilled to continue partnering with incredible entrepreneurs in our region and from the diaspora abroad. The first few investments from Fund II are already in the closing stages and we cannot wait to share what we’ve been working on once they are finalised.”

BrightCap’s first fund has proven successful with notable investments including LucidLink, Pliant, and Enview. The portfolio has seen 5 successful exits out of 22 investments, and companies have raised over $150M in follow-on capital.

Diana Stefanova, who joins the team as a full-time partner after 16 years at VMware, concludes: “The tech industry is facing a pivotal moment. With BrightCap II, we have the opportunity to capture the next generation of category-defining companies from our region and nurture them to success. I look forward to bringing my tech enterprise experience in support of SEE startups to scale their businesses and reach global markets.”