German climate tech VC raises ‘record-breaking’ €300M first fund

Berlin-based World Fund has stuffed its coffers with €300M, in what it claims to be the biggest first-time fund raised by any local weather tech VC in European historical past. 

Based in 2021, World Fund invests in startups constructing tech to decarbonise industries from vitality and buildings to move and agriculture. It has already backed 15 early-stage firms, together with SpaceForge, which manufactures supplies in orbit, and Slovenian startup Juicy Marbles, which makes fake meat whole cuts. 

“We search for founders constructing firms and applied sciences with the potential to scale, ship important cuts in CO2 emissions, and energy systemic change,” Danijel Visevic, managing associate at World Fund, informed TNW.   

Securing money has been particularly robust the final yr or so, amid one in all historical past’s biggest downturns in VC funding. This has pushed many promising startups off the sting.  

World Fund appears to be like to bridge the hole by specializing in the bigger sums startups have to scale. Investing in local weather tech ought to give it a head begin — the sector stays some of the resilient regardless of muted VC exercise. 

“We’re on a mission to make sure that the perfect of European local weather techs don’t fail as a result of dearth of funding past the earliest phases — that notorious ‘Sequence B valley of demise’ that has plagued European firms for too lengthy,” mentioned Višević.

World Fund will use the contemporary capital to make new investments in over 25 European local weather tech and deep tech startups. This week, it co-led a €25mn founding spherical in UK-based Mission Zero, which builds energy-efficient carbon capture machines. 

The sheer measurement of its first fund places the VC in good stead to supply a big runway for these budding firms, it mentioned. 

World Fund managed to boost a lot cash partly due to what it calls the “institutionalisation” of local weather tech — in different phrases, that the sector is maturing. 

A lot of World Fund’s new backers had by no means invested in first-time VC funds. These embrace the UK Setting Company Pension Fund and British accounting large PwC.

“Our local weather is at a pivotal juncture and institutional traders, like many individuals and organisations worldwide, are more and more conscious of the pressing have to take motion and spend money on the applied sciences that can ship a regenerative world,” mentioned Višević.  

World Fund was based in 2021 by Daria Saharova, Danijel Višević, Tim Schumacher, and Craig Douglas. It has workplaces in Berlin, Munich, Cologne, and Amsterdam.

World Fund was backed by the European Funding Fund, which commited €50mn, KfW Capital, Wachstumsfonds, BPI France (its first funding outdoors France), PwC Germany, NRWbank, and Ignitis Group. Various pension funds additionally joined the fund, together with the UK Setting Company Pension Fund, Wiltshire Pension Fund, and Croatia’s Erste Plavi.