French VC company DAPHNI announced the first closing of the new fund, Daphni Blue. The company raised 200 million euros (about $ 225 million at the current exchange rate). It is expected to increase 250 million euros ($ 270 million) by the end of the year.
Some of Daphni’s most notable past investments include Back Market, Swile, Hubcycle and PASQAL. Overall, the company has invested in 70 European new companies since 2015.
DAPHNI plans to invest in another 40 new companies through the latest funds. Limited partners of Daphni Blue include Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, BPIFRANCE, EUROPEAN Investment Fund, Pro BTP and SWEN Capital Partners.
The founding partner, Pierre-Eic Leibovici, said, “We need to ask yourself how we can differentiate ourselves and how to support sustainable technologies or services when investing in a new project.
“At the end of the day, there is a cycle, so we can see that there is no groundbreaking enough to integrate the market at a given moment, to be dominated by American players, or eventually start.”
Most VC companies refer to artificial intelligence in all other sentences, but DAPHNI tries to emphasize science (overall) as a major factor in next innovation, such as life science, biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics.
Leibovici said, “When we talk about quantum computing, quantum computing is a default physics combined with hardware and software, and he also says that a large language model is a groundbreaking innovation of mathematics.
As a result, DAPHNI is recruiting other profiles to join the team. For example, a doctorate and a doctoral degree student are in the investment team.
Leibovici said, “There is another element that is a new trend. The new generation researchers are much more open to commerce basic and application research.
Although the French University is part of the budget to attract US researchers, Daphni says he has not chose to focus on basic science.
Leibovici said, “It is a coincidence of coincidence. We have started a long time ago, of course, DAPHNI is open to investments in US researchers who start startups in Europe.
Next, DAPHNI should prove that newly raised capital was placed and found an efficient investment strategy. Leibovici said, “It is not the end in itself, the end itself is to distribute the return.
