Creandum closes €668 million eighth fund, the largest in its history

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Stockholm-based Creandum has closed Creandum VIII at €668 million ($750 million), the biggest fund the firm has raised. Its predecessor, Fund VII, closed in June 2024 at €500 million, so the direction of travel is fairly clear. The new money is for early-stage technology start-ups up to Series A, with about 30 investments planned over the next two years. Roughly half is set aside for new deals and the rest for follow-on rounds, the part of venture investing where you get to put more money into the companies that are already working.

Around 30 institutional investors from Europe and the United States committed, including pension funds, university endowments and charities. Creandum says it will stay a generalist, though AI is expected to feature heavily: recent bets include Lovable, Black Forest Labs, Modal, Olix and Rillet, alongside older ones such as Klarna, Spotify, Bolt, Depop, iZettle and Trade Republic. Partner Peter Specht said "1 in 6 companies we've backed has become a $1B+ company", a statistic that presumably made the fundraising conversations shorter.

Founded in 2003 by Staffan Helgesson, the firm also has offices in London and Berlin, and has had a presence in San Francisco since 2012, where it has now opened a new office and tripled its team. The idea is to help European companies move into the US and to back American founders early. Creandum notes that about half of the capital invested in European tech over the last year came from the US, while very little went the other way. It is also bringing AI into how it finds, assesses and supports companies, which seems only fair given what it is funding.