Fly Ventures closes €80M Fund III to support deeptech founders in Europe

Fly Ventures has closed its €80 million Fund III. It follows its €53 million Fund II and €35 million Fund I. The Firm addresses a critical gap in the European funding landscape for deep tech founders. 

“If you are a deeply technical founder or working on a hard technical problem in Europe, your funding options at the inception stage mostly suck,” stated Gabriel Matuschka. 

Founders often find it frustrating to simplify their pitches for investors who apply generic SaaS logic to everything. This approach can be harmful, especially in the early stages of deep tech development. 

Fly often engages with founders 6-9 months before they officially start their companies. 

With Matt Wichrowski, Marie Brayer, Fredrik Bergenlid and Gabriel Matuschka, Fly Ventures operates in an equal-GP model of four partners in a distributed setup – with a presence in Berlin, London, Paris, and Zurich. 

Matt Wichrowski, who joined Fly in 2020, explained:

“We partner with exceptional technical founders from day zero. Most of these relationships begin through our network, recommending someone from DeepMind or an engineering executive recently returned from the US, who is likely to start a company in the coming year. We love being part of the formation process.” 

Fredrik Bergenlid, GP at Fly Ventures and previously co-founder and lead for Google Assistant, explained: 

“We’re committed to backing extreme technical talent that spent years on a specific problem domain. For example, Scott Chacon, who previously co-founded GitHub, is now revolutionising developer workflows with GitButler.

These types of exceptional technical founders have a vision of a vastly better future, and we use our time and capital to help them materialise this future.” 

The Firm invests €1 to 4 million in rounds of €2-8M million at the inception stage. 

Fly Ventures Fund III was raised on the strength of being the first check investor in several standout companies, including unicorn Wayve, Lakera, and Orbital Materials.

Over 75 per cent of Fly’s portfolio companies go on to raise a follow-on round or get acquired vs. the industry average of 31 per cent for Seed VCs in Europe. 

AI has accounted for about 45 per cent of Fly’s investments, with vertical applications and industrial tech taking up 35 per cent, and dev tools/infrastructure taking up 20 per cent.

LPs in Fund III include the European Investment Fund (EIF) via the ERP-EIF Facility and KfW Capital through the ERP – Venture Capital Fondsfinanzierung facility. 

Lead image: Fly Ventures. Photo: uncredited.