Paris-based Elaia is a venture capital firm that focuses on European digital and deep tech startups investing from early-stage to growth development. In a recent development, the firm announced the first closing of its 4th generation of Digital Venture funds — Elaia DV4 fund, at €120M.
It has received over €120M of commitments mostly from repeat investors, and expects to reach its objective of €150M by summer 2021. The hard capital, set at €200M, could be met before the end of the year.
Elaia DV4 investment plans
The latest fund, Elaia DV4, will invest in about 25 European B2B digital intensive and deep tech startups. Its aim is to focus on potential sectors such as cloud infrastructure, retail tech, digital transformation, digital life sciences, and fintech.
Elaia DV4 will invest at the early stages to Series B round, with initial investments between €1M – €10M – which may include leading or co-leading the entry rounds. The firm also mentioned that for its previous vintages, a significant part of the fund will be dedicated to follow-on rounds, in order to support the best performers with up to €20M.
About Elaia
Founded in 2002 by Philippe Gire and Xavier Lazarus, Elaia is a European VC firm that backs tech disruptors with global ambition from early stage to growth development. For the past 20 years, the firm’s commitment has been to deliver high performance with values.
With €600M assets under management, Elaia has backed over 100 tech disruptors including 3 unicorns: Criteo (Nasdaq), Mirakl, and Shift Technology, which were seed-funded and supported over time. Some of its other portfolio companies include Orchestra Networks (acquired by Tibco), Sigfox, and Teads (acquired by Altice), among others.
All investments made by Elaia take into account the ESG Principles. They are also signatories of the Principles for Responsible Investments (PRI), promoted by the United Nations. ESG or Environmental, social, and governance criteria are a set of standards for a company’s operations that socially conscious investors use to screen potential investments.
Elaia’s strategic partners
New and existing investors who took part in the current investment include Bpifrance, the European Investment Fund, MGEN, BNP, BRED, family offices as well as tech entrepreneurs – part of them being successful entrepreneurs from Elaia’s portfolio.
Xavier Lazarus, CEO of Elaia explains, “We have built a strong and deep relationship with our early investors, based on trust and performance during our many years of working together. We are delighted to have such renowned investors backing us and that they also now strongly buy into our platform strategy with a family of funds, ranging from deep tech seed to digital ventures. This strategy has been proven to work: last year, we invested in twice as many companies than we used to while returning more money to our investors than we invested.”
Already three investments closed
The first three investments of this new fund are about to be announced in various fields such as monitoring network communications, securing large endpoints networks, and digitising the large B2B commercial exchanges.
With more than 75 years of accumulated experience in both venture capital and digital industries, the investment team offers close, proactive, and relevant support to its entrepreneurs.
Elaia Alpha II Fund
According to the VC firm, another of its tech funds, Elaia Alpha II Fund, recently reached €55M, adding €25M from its first close. Elaia Alpha II Fund, in partnership with Inria, is on course to reach an investment capacity of €65M-90M. Inria is the French national research institute for digital science and technology.
Elaia Alpha II Fund aims to invest in pre-seed and seed stage in 30 to 40 French companies, mainly European, in various fields such as AI, data science, digital health, cybersecurity, digital infrastructures, virtual reality, enterprise software, industrial IoT and embedded systems.
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