Creator Fund, a London-based pre-seed venture capital firm that helps scientific founders turn university research into deeptech startups, has raised $41 million for its first European institutional fund. The fund is anchored by Equation Capital and Denmark’s Export and Investment Fund (EIFO).
- Launched in 2019 by Jamie Macfarlane, Creator Fund is a venture capital firm that invests in deeptech startups founded by PhD researchers and academics across Europe.
- The firm focuses on areas such as AI, robotics, life sciences, and quantum computing, targeting pre-seed and seed-stage companies. Operating across 28 university campuses, it uses student investors to identify projects early and provide initial support.
- To date, Creator Fund has invested in 55 startups, whose founders have raised more than $250 million in follow-on funding, and the firm has recorded two exits.
- Creator Fund’s new $41 million fund is aimed at supporting PhD founders and deeptech startups across Europe. They plan to make around 40 to 45 early-stage investments, typically ranging from $500,000 to $900,000, with a focus on companies spun out of top universities, such as Cambridge, ETH Zurich, and Munich.
- The new fund has already made four investments, including two disclosed:
- Ovo Labs, a spinout from Germany’s Max Planck Institute, is developing technology to reverse the age-related decline of the human egg.
- Sphotonix, founded by academics from the University of Southampton and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, uses precision lasers to engrave data into glass for secure storage.
- The new fund is backed by German asset manager Equation Capital and Denmark’s Export and Investment Fund (EIFO), along with over 60 additional limited partners, including Blue Wire Capital, Basecamp (the Phoenix Court Group’s fund of funds), and Skaala, the investment firm founded by early Skype employees Taavet Hinrikus and Sten Tamkivi.
