Paris-based venture capital firm HCVC has just announced the definitive closure of its second fund called simply “Fund II”. And the team has managed to raise 75 million dollars (69 million euros) to support seed and pre-seed companies in Europe and North America.
Originally focused on investments in hardware startups, HCVC quickly evolved to invest in general deep tech startups, such as companies working in climate, biotech, robotics, space, etc. Some of HCVC’s portfolio companies include an electric bicycle manufacturer. Cowboythe nuclear fusion technology company Renaissance Fusion, Span, Caper, Automata, Radia and Augmenta.
The name HCVC itself comes from hardware club, a community of hardware and deep technology companies that share knowledge and help each other through the network. There are more than 600 companies in the club.
This Hardware Club has never been a way to make money directly. HCVC is not an investor in all Hardware Club companies. Since 2018, the firm has backed 50 companies with its original $50 million fund.
With HCVC’s new fund, the venture capital firm plans to make up to 40 investments, which means approximately 10 deals per year. On average, HCVC will be able to invest between 250,000 and 2.5 million euros per operation (between 260,000 and 2.6 million dollars).
“We want to support founders who create a future with more clean energy, more powerful computing, more context-aware robots, better defense tools for democracies, and biomanufacturing that allows us to decarbonize food production,” said the founder and managing partner of HCVC, Alexis Houssou, in a statement.
In addition to Houssou, Jerry Yang, Aymerik Renard and Alex Flamant are the other three partners in the fund. Alex Flamant is a recent addition to the team. He was a director at Singular, another Paris-based venture capital firm. He also spent some time at Notion Capital.
As for limited partners, HCVC raised money from the European Investment Fund, Isomer Capital, Molten Ventures, as well as several individual investors, such as Albert Wenger (managing partner of USV), John Elkann (chairman of Stellantis and Ferrari) and Toto . Wolff (Team Principal and CEO of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team).
Interestingly, HCVC also says that its fund is exclusively backed by European, American and Japanese investors. technology/2023/5/1/23702451/silicon-valley-saudi-money-khashoggi”>unlike many US VC firms.there is no participation of investors from Saudi Arabia.
