Mundi Ventures Raises €750M for Largest Deep Tech & Climate Fund
▼ Summary
– Mundi Ventures has launched the Kembara Fund I, a €750 million (potentially €1.25 billion) deep tech fund to address Europe’s shortage of growth capital for scaling startups.
– The fund specifically targets Series B and C rounds, planning initial investments of €15-40 million and up to €100 million total per company to help them scale manufacturing and expand globally.
– Kembara’s strategy includes providing “non-dilutive financing” and venture debt, a lesson from co-founder Yann de Vries’s experience with the bankruptcy of Lilium, which highlighted the difficulty of scaling with equity alone.
– The fund’s focus includes climate tech, deep tech, and dual-use/defense technologies, aiming to build “European champions” and protect sovereignty, with backing from European institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds.
– Kembara’s team includes seasoned partners with track records in climate and deep tech VC, and the fund seeks global investors to secure international market access and supply chains for its portfolio companies.
A significant new player has entered the European investment landscape with the first close of a major fund aimed squarely at the growth-stage financing gap. Mundi Ventures has successfully raised €750 million for its Kembara Fund I, a vehicle dedicated to scaling deep tech and climate startups. This substantial capital pool, which could ultimately reach €1.25 billion, is positioned to provide the crucial Series B and C funding that many European innovators struggle to secure, addressing a well-documented scale-up problem on the continent.
The fund’s closing, achieved in just two years, was bolstered by a €350 million commitment from the European Investment Fund. Kembara is managed by a specialized team within Mundi Ventures and boasts a seasoned leadership group. Co-founders and general partners include Javier Santiso, founder of Mundi Ventures, and Yann de Vries, whose experience as a venture capitalist and later as an executive at the now-defunct electric aircraft company Lilium profoundly shaped the fund’s strategy. They are joined by climate tech investor Robert Trezona, deep tech VC Pierre Festal, and senior strategic advisor Siraj Khaliq, formerly of Atomico.
De Vries’s time at Lilium, which ceased operations in 2024 after raising over a billion dollars, provided a firsthand look at the challenges growth-stage companies face. “Europe doesn’t have an innovation problem. It doesn’t have a startup problem. The problem it has is a scale-up problem,” he observed. This insight directly informs Kembara’s investment approach. The fund plans initial investments between €15 million and €40 million into roughly twenty companies, with the capacity for follow-on funding that could bring total commitments to €100 million per portfolio company.
Beyond writing large equity checks, Kembara intends to differentiate itself by productizing non-dilutive financing options, such as venture debt, for its founders. This strategy aims to help companies de-risk their capital structure and minimize dilution, a lesson de Vries learned from Lilium’s reliance on equity financing. The fund’s limited partners are expected to participate not only in the fund itself but also in co-investment opportunities with these growing companies.
Geopolitical considerations are also a factor, with sovereign wealth funds and governments showing increased interest in fostering European champions in strategic sectors. Kembara’s focus areas explicitly include dual-use and defense technologies to protect European sovereignty. However, the goal is not isolationist. “There are lots of gems that are under the radar in Europe, that could be scaling into global champions,” de Vries noted, citing the early acquisition of DeepMind by Google as a cautionary tale of lost potential.
The fund’s name, Kembara, means “to wander” in Malaysian, reflecting an ambition for global reach. This is more than symbolic; connections through Santiso, former CEO for Europe of Malaysia’s Khazanah sovereign wealth fund, may facilitate international market and supply chain access. As the fund looks toward a second close, it will seek global investors to help build border-crossing champions in fields like quantum computing, semiconductors, and space technology.
(Source: TechCrunch)
