French VC Firm Dafnee Announcing the first conclusion of its new funds, Daphney Blue. The firm has raised € 200 million (about 215 million dollars at current exchange rates). It expects to raise more as € 250 million ($ 270 million) by the end of the year.
Some of the most notable previous investments of Daphney include back market, swail, hubcycle and pascal. Overall, the firm has invested in 70 European startups since 2015.
With its latest funds, Daphney plans to invest in another 40 startups. Limited Partners in Daphney Blue include Credit Mutuel Arkeya, BPIFR, European Investment Fund, Pro BTP and Swen Capital Partners.
Founder Pierre-Eric Libowissi told me, “We need to ask ourselves how we can separate the two, and when we invest in new projects, it can support technologies or services.”
“Because at the end of the day, there are cycles, and we can see that in a certain moment, either the market is consolidated, or it dominates by American players, or in the end, was not enough for a success to begin.”
While most VC firms refer to artificial intelligence in every other sentence, want to emphasize daffony science (mass) as the main factor for the next wave of innovation: life science, biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics.
“When you talk about quantum computing, well, quantum computing is a fundamental physics combined with hardware and software,” said Libovissy. He also said that big language models are first and first of all mathematics successes.
As a result, the Daphney is recruiting various profiles to join the team. For example, a PhD graduate and a PhD student is in the investment team.
“There is another element that is a new trend. The new generation of researchers is much more open to commercialize its original and applied research, as they start all their friends to companies around them,” Libovisi said.
While there are French universities to separate A part of his budget to attract American researchers, Dafnee says that this was not selected to refine on fundamental science.
“This is a coincidence. We launched it long before this trend,” Libovissi said. Of course, the defuntious American researchers are open to investing a startup in Europe.
Subsequently, Daphney will have to deploy this newly raised capital and prove that it has got an efficient investment strategy. “Raising is not an end in itself. There is an end in itself that is distributing returns in itself, and therefore comes out,” said Libovissy.
