Early-stage VC Antler closes Nordic fund at USD 36M
Antler has closed its first Nordic investment fund to continue to support early-stage tech startups in the region. Following strong interest, Antler’s Nordic fund was oversubscribed, closing at $36m, including participation from Draper Esprit, Kistefos, the Danish state fund Vækstfonden, and the Norwegian state fund Investinor.
“We’re experiencing rapid growth,” says Oscar Westergård, Partner at Antler Nordics. “Since the start, we’ve invested in over 60 companies across the Nordics and it feels truly inspiring to close an oversubscribed fund, allowing us to continue to invest in groundbreaking ventures.”
To this date, venture capital firms such as FJ Labs, Inventure, Luminar Ventures, London Venture Partners, J12 and Propel Capital along with an impressive number of angel investors, have invested together with Antler’s Nordic portfolio companies.
“Antler is pioneering a new model of talent investing by selecting the world’s most exceptional founders, from serial entrepreneurs and industry leaders to top tier technologists and operators, and then building a network around them,” says Jonathan Sibilia, Partner, Head of Secondaries and Fund of Funds at Draper Esprit. “At Draper Esprit we want to ensure we’re partnering with the best businesses early on, and supporting Antler Nordic enables us to do exactly that with a proven formula of specialist teams in prime locations throughout Europe.”
The support of such renowned investors will see Antler continue to enable exceptional people to build the defining companies of tomorrow.
“Now, we are looking to collaborate with individuals, entrepreneurs, politicians and corporations that want to make the Nordics one of the best regions in the world to build new companies in, and support founders from an early stage to work with us,” says Anders Hammarbäck, Partner at Antler Nordics.
Anne Solhaug Tutar, Partner at Antler Nordics, adds, “It’s wonderful to be able to continue supporting exceptional entrepreneurs through our model, regardless of factors such as background, gender and age. Still today, merely 7% of venture capital in Nordics is invested in companies with at least one female co-founder. At Antler Nordics, this number is 43%”.
Antler continues to take an active role in supporting their portfolio companies in scaling up. Many of Antler’s startups have continued to raise further capital, including:
- Skyqraft (AI system that automatically detects powerline equipment and powerline issues that has raised a USD 2.2M seed round),
- TradeBay (global B2B marketplace for fruit trading that has raised USD 1.1M),
- NAG Studios (game development studio for competitive games that raised USD 1M),
- Teemyco (Future of Work- and SaaS platform for virtual offices that has raised a total of USD 1M).
Now, we are focused on finding the right strategic partners to work with.
This article was written by Antler Nordics team.
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