What: HCVC closed its second fund at $75 million versus an initial target of $60 million.
"That's going to allow us to invest in more companies but also potentially invest with larger checks," said HCVC Partner and co-founder Alexis Houssou. "That's because I think we're in an environment where companies need to be funded for longer. Given that we're still in the middle or at the end of what was a rough couple of years for venture capital, we're very excited."
HCVC now has $130 million in assets under management. Fund II will make 40 investments or about 10 per year.
Number of Investments: More than 50 globally.
Size of Investments: Pre-seed and seed, primarily in Europe and North America, with checks ranging from €250,000 to €2.5 million.
What's notable: HCVC started as the Hardware Club, a community for hardware founders. Hardware Club now has 600 companies in 50 countries and helps founders develop their ideas and connect with potential partners such as manufacturing, distribution, and retail.
Chris O’Brien
In parallel, Houssou launched a $50 million venture fund in late 2018. He was joined by partners Jerry Yang and Aymerik Renard.
Chris O’Brien
HCVC has now added a fourth partner, Alex Flamant, who was previously a VC at Notion Capital and Kindred Capital in London. Flamant specializes in AI and worked at IBM Watson before becoming a VC.
Focus: The firm invests around themes related to what it calls "hard tech": Climate, Defense, AI infrastructure, Robotics, Techbio, and Space.
Notable investments:
Span
Caper (acquired by Instacart)
Automata
Cowboy
And from Fund II:
Radian
Augmenta (acquired by CNH Industrial).
Renaissance Fusion
Antaris
Ark Biotech
Transmutex
Sarcura
What they bring to the table: The new Fund is backed by such institutional investors as the European Investment Fund, Isomer Capital and Molten Ventures. In addition, the fund's LPs Albert Wenger (USV), John Elkann (Chairman of Stellantis and Ferrari) and Toto Wolff (Mercedes F1 AMG).
