Elaia Partners, a Paris-based venture capital firm, has held the initial closing of its new venture capital fund, Elaia Delta Fund, at EUR115 million.
This new investment vehicle pursues the fundamental drivers of Elaia Partners’ historical strategy targeting European early-stage digital opportunities based on high disruption and on deep technology.
Elaia Partners will focus on B2B or B2B2C business models demonstrating global ambitions.
Thanks to its increased fund size and optimised portfolio management model, Elaia Partners will be able to drive further its investment strategy by supporting its best performing investments through their successive fundraisings.
Xavier Lazarus, partner at Elaia Partners, says: “The timing for raising a new fund and investing at an early stage in Europe could not be better. Especially, the French deep tech start-ups are enjoying a powerful momentum: the best data scientists, software engineers, AI researchers and applied mathematicians seize the opportunity to transform their knowledge into fantastic products, while benefiting from the great level of maturity reached by the entrepreneurial ecosystem. We truly believe that the success stories backed by Elaia Partners so far such as Criteo, Mirakl, Sigfox or Teads, are just a starting point of what will be achieved in the future.”
In this initial closing of Elaia Delta Fund, Elaia Partners welcomes all its major repeating investors, including Bpifrance and EIF, through the InnovFin mandate, and expanded its limited partners base with numerous French and international investors with complementary profiles (institutions, funds of funds, insurance companies, corporates, family offices) including Sabadell Asset Management, MGEN, BNP Paribas, EDF, Nexity, Financière Saint-James (vente-privee.com cofounder Michaël Bénabou’s personal holding), Groupe ADP, CEPAC Investissement & Développement, BRED Banque Populaire amongst others.
Elaia Partners is advised in its fundraising strategy by Axonia Partners, a Paris based placement agent. Elaia Partners will keep subscriptions to the fund open due to ongoing interest from additional investors.
The firm is expecting to reach its EUR150 million hard cap through a final close in the next few months.
Philippe Gire, partner at Elaia Partners, says: “This highly successful fundraising is essentially due to the quality of our investment strategy and the consistent performance delivered since inception 15 years ago. It leads to compelling net cash returns for our existing investors, with close to EUR300 million already returned from our previous funds, representing net returns above 3x.”
Pier Luigi Gilibert, EIF chief executive, says: “EIF is pleased to be supporting Elaia – a niche player in the French ICT funding ecosystem. There are few players operating in the seed-stage financing space, who are comfortable with funding high technology/IP rich companies. Elaia is an entrepreneur-friendly fund, a criteria which is in line with EIF’s entrepreneurship and growth mission, helping companies to develop and expand in the ICT sector.”
