The fund combines public capital, managed by the EIF, as well as more than 30% private capital from new and existing individual and corporate investors. BrightCap Fund II is the first VC fund to have attracted RRF funds from two countries, Bulgaria and Romania.
“We are thrilled to continue partnering with incredible entrepreneurs in our region and from the diaspora abroad. The first few investments from Fund II are already in the closing stages and we cannot wait to share what we’ve been working on once they are finalized,” stated Elina Halatcheva, BrightCap Ventures managing partner.
The new capital will be invested in founders from Rising Southeastern Europe – a region home to outstanding tech talent and an increasing number of global success stories in recent years. Founded by a diverse team, combining entrepreneurial, big tech and investment experience, BrightCap’s goal is to help founders from Rising SEE scale into Western European and US markets.
With its first fund, BrightCap has validated this thesis. Notable investments include storage collaboration platform LucidLink, which recently raised a $75m Series C round, enterprise orchestration platform Pliant, which was recently acquired by IBM, as well as pioneer in scalable AI for 3D spatial data Enview, acquired by Matterport. Overall, BrightCap’s Fund I portfolio has so far seen 5 exits to strategic acquirers out of 22 investments and more than $150m of follow-on capital raised.
“BrightCap II is an exciting new step for us – larger scale fund with a wider scope and even greater ambitions than our first. At the same time, our philosophy of working with deeply technical founders with domain expertise and global reach from day one hasn’t changed. It keeps us grounded in the AI era where opportunities seem everywhere, but lasting technology winners can be built by few,” stated Georgi Mitov, managing partner at BrightCap Ventures.
With Fund II, BrightCap aims to build upon this experience and invest in unique, globally scalable and impactful tech companies born out of Rising Southeastern Europe. There will be three priority verticals – Future of Work, Digital Health and Fintech. The majority of initial investment tickets will be aimed at the pre-seed and seed stages and in the €0.4m to €3m range.
“The tech industry is facing a pivotal moment. With BrightCap II, we have the opportunity to capture the next generation of category-defining companies from our region and nurture them to success. I look forward to bringing my tech enterprise experience in support of SEE startups to scale their businesses and reach global markets,” mentioned Diana Stefanova, who joins the team as a full time partner after 16 years at VMware.
BrightCap II is funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU with the financial backing of the Government of Bulgaria under the Bulgaria Recovery and Resilience Plan, and with the financial backing of the Government of Romania under the Romania Recovery Equity Fund.
(English version by Catalina Apostoiu)