Paris-based venture capital firm HCVC has announced the successful closing of its second fund, called “Fund II,” with a total of $75 million (€69 million) raised. The firm aims to support pre-seed and seed companies in Europe and North America.
Initially focused on investing in hardware startups, HCVC expanded its investment scope to include deep tech startups working in areas such as climate, biotech, robotics, and space. Some of the companies in HCVC’s portfolio include Cowboy, a maker of electric bikes, Renaissance Fusion, a nuclear fusion technology company, and Span, Caper, Automata, Radia, and Augmenta.
HCVC’s name is derived from the Hardware Club, a community of hardware and deep tech companies that collaborate and share knowledge through their network. The club consists of more than 600 companies. It’s important to note that HCVC isn’t an investor in every company in the Hardware Club, and its purpose is not solely focused on making direct profits. Since its establishment in 2018, the VC firm has already supported 50 companies through its original $50 million fund.
With the new fund, HCVC plans to make approximately 40 investments, averaging around 10 deals per year. The firm intends to allocate between €250,000 and €2.5 million per deal ($260,000 to $2.6 million), depending on the specific requirements and potential of each startup.
HCVC’s founder and managing partner, Alexis Houssou, stated that the firm aims to support visionary founders whose innovations contribute to a future with cleaner energy, advanced computing, context-aware robots, improved defense tools for democracies, and biomanufacturing for decarbonizing food production.
In addition to Houssou, the other partners in HCVC’s fund include Jerry Yang, Aymerik Renard, and recent addition Alex Flamant, who was previously a principal at another Paris-based VC firm called Singular, and also worked with Notion Capital.
The limited partners who invested in HCVC’s fund include the European Investment Fund, Isomer Capital, Molten Ventures, as well as prominent individual investors such as Albert Wenger, managing partner at USV, John Elkann, chairman of Stellantis and Ferrari, and Toto Wolff, team principal and CEO of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team.
An interesting aspect of HCVC’s fund is that it is exclusively backed by investors from Europe, America, and Japan, with no Saudi Arabian investor participation, setting it apart from many U.S. VC firms.
Sources: HCVC, TechCrunch