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Fly projectsThe Berlin-based VC firm, which invests in European seed-stage startups within enterprise and deep technology, has launched its third fund worth €80 million. The company last raised €53 million in funding in 2020.
The company targets technical founders, and claims the third fund was oversubscribed and raised in a single closing. At the same time, the slight increase in the size of the fund reflects the company’s desire to operate as a small company.
“We like to do things that other people at the time thought, ‘What is…materials science and artificial intelligence?!’” Matuszka told TechCrunch. “These days, more people are doing it, but our plan is to make this kind of investment two or more years ago.” Three years of everyone else’s attention.
Fly Ventures, founded by Gabriel Matuszka and Fredrik Bergenlied, invests €1-4 million in seed rounds of €2-10 million.
With Matt Fischrowski, Mary Breyer, Bergenlied and Matuszka, the firm operates on an equal GP model of four partners spread across Berlin, London, Paris and Zurich.
“I think the Berlin/London question specifically is also in addition to Munich, because from Berlin you can cover Munich. And for the technical stuff, Munich tends to be a little stronger. But it was always clear that you had to do it in Germany and the UK.” “I think over the last four years or so, Paris has also accelerated on the artistic side, which is why we also added Marie, who is based in Paris,” Matuszka said.
Bergenlied previously worked at Google on Google Assistant, and Matuszka previously founded the travel shopping club TripHunter (acquired by brands4friends, now owned by eBay).
So far, AI represents about 45% of Fly’s investments, with vertical applications and industrial technology accounting for 35%, and development tools/infrastructure accounting for 20%.
In its portfolio are clinical trials marketplace Inato, anti-money laundering startup Salv, and cybersecurity startup GitGuardian.
Another company, Wayve, recently raised $1.05 billion in a Series C round led by SoftBank to develop autonomous driving using self-learning technology.
It is also investing in Lakera, a Zurich-based startup that aims to protect organizations from LLM vulnerabilities, and in Orbital Materials, a UK-based company that develops basic models for materials science.
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