TLDR:
– Dutch clean energy investor SET Ventures has landed a new fund of €200 million for digital tech.
– The fund will be deployed into 20 to 25 European startups focusing on renewable energy.
New climate tech VC firms have emerged in recent years, but existing ones are also raising larger funds. Founded in 2007, Dutch firm SET Ventures is one of the latter. Its fourth fund, which just closed at €200 million, is twice the size of its previous one, and will be deployed into 20 to 25 European startups making renewable energy more mainstream. SET’s name, pronounced “set,” stands for Sustainable Energy Technologies. Its long track record of investing in European climate-focused startups and article 9 status, which requires a commitment to sustainability as a goal, helped it attract more capital than ever from a mix of corporate and institutional LPs.
But managing partner Anton Arts is aware that a larger fund can drive early-stage firms toward writing larger checks at later stages, driving them away from their area of expertise. SET plans to avoid this pitfall “by doing more deals, not doing different deals,” he told TechCrunch. This means steering clear of making late-stage investments, except as follow-ons. “Our sweet spot is Series A, where we’ll write initial checks between €2 and €5 million,” Arts said.
One recent example is German digital heat management startup Vilisto, which raised a €5 million Series A round from SET and others. Check size won’t change, but SET’s thesis did evolve over the years to veer towards the digital side of things. “For this fourth fund,” Arts said, “we have formulated our mission to invest in the digital technologies that are needed for the carbon-free energy system.” This makes SET different from World Fund, for instance: Danijel Višević, a managing partner at this climate-focused firm that recently closed a €300 million first fund, told TechCrunch that Europe was not concentrating enough on hardware for climate.
