Mundi Ventures closes on €​​​​​​750M in Kembara, its largest technology and climate fund

Europe invests billions in the early season, only to see many fail at Series B, according to a recent report. But new funds are being raised to fill this gap, and Mundi Ventures’ latest fund in Spain, Kembara Fund I, is one of them.

After setting up a A commitment of €350 million from the European Investment Fund under European Tech Champions Initiative in 2024, Mundi Ventures has just completed the first closing of €750 million A journeyhis fifth and biggest bag to date.

Legal documents from Spain will reveal that the fund – focused on deep technology – can stretch its final closing to €1.25 billion. But according to Kembara’s co-founder and general partner Yann de Vries, reaching €​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Kembara is managed by a team of professionals within Mundi Ventures, which has offices in Madrid, London, Barcelona, ​​​​​​​​and Paris. Mundi Ventures founder Javier Santiso is now co-founder and GP of the Kembara fund, which has now revealed its full list of partners.

Alongside de Vries and Santiso, meteorologist VC Robert Trezona and deep tech VC Pierre Festal have also joined as general partners, along with former Atomico partner Siraj Khaliq as a senior technical advisor.

Their individual writings helped them raise money from their sponsors to wake up to the need for European capital that would transform it. many university courses in large businesses with corporate synergies. But it also gave them a front-row seat to Europe’s climate crisis and technological innovations – especially de Vries.

A well-known venture capitalist who founded Redpoint eVentures Brazil and later became a partner at Atomico, de Vries moved to the other side of the table. Enter the German electric aircraft Lilium – for the company itself to stop work in 2024 after raising more than $1 billion and going public through a SPAC.

In de Vries’s view, Lilium failed because it didn’t get the big money it needed, but this “disappointing event” also had a silver lining. “I saw a lot of amazing teams in Europe going through the same journey,” he said. “(Europe) doesn’t have a technology problem. It doesn’t have a startup problem. The problem it has is a scaling problem.”

Kembara’s sweet spot will be the Series B and C round, with plans to write the first checks from € 15 million to € 40 million in 20 companies. But the size of the fund leaves the next opportunity to help startups create and expand worldwide, and the total investment can rise to 100 million for each company.

This is more than the overall growth of most European funds, although this may change: the deep technology company VC Elaia and the asset manager Lazard have agreed to create. LEC (Lazard Elaia Capital), whose initial investments will range from €​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​first More information he says raising a new fund of € 1 billion.

However, the incremental nature of many weather companies and the growth of technology means that even large VC checks can only go so far. One lesson that de Vries learned from Lilium is that fair breeding alone is very difficult, and even puts companies in a difficult position later on. This encouraged Kembara to find another way to earn money.

“Many of us have been through this, and what we want to do now is to create a non-cash investment for the founders of the deep technology to help them risk their future investments and better manage their resources to reduce the reduction.”

For these LPs, geopolitics also plays a role in the desire to provide larger capital and credit to European startups. “There has been a lot of support from independent funds in Europe, from the government, from industry, to push and drive the construction of European experts in European technology,” de Vries predicted.

This internationalism is also reflected in the Kembara sector, which includes dual use and defense technology “to protect European sovereignty,” according to the press. However, de Vries pushed back against the idea that Kembara was merely converting money that later European outfits would have imported.

“There are a lot of under-the-radar gems in Europe, who could be world champions, and they don’t realize their potential.” He said DeepMind is a similar example, “where they need a lot of money and sell very early.” (Google bought the company more than $500 million in 2014but now they are estimated to be billions.)

Keeping European companies in Europe has been active in many areas that are compatible with Kembara’s ideas, such as quantum computing, semiconductors, and space tech. But the goal is to encourage international professionals who cross borders. Literally, Kembara means “to wander” in Malaysian (although the group has “a slow path to success” as the old meaning).

Beyond the name, Kembara has Malaysian connections. Santiso is also the former CEO of the European sovereign wealth fund Khazanah; and the doors can open as many countries explore their contact with the US “In the second closing, we will be looking for investors from around the world, because we want to have access to global markets, as well as global access to the chain,” de Vries said.