Draper Esprit, a London headquartered VC firm that backs high growth European tech firms, has secured funding commitments to raise gross proceeds of £110m through the placing of new shares.
The firm has previously backed well-known tech platforms Trustpilot and Perkbox, and and led a £65m funding round for cloud banking tech firm Thought Machine.
More recently it has participated in raises for London payments-as-a-service firm Form3, audio journalism app Curio.
“There is a significant opportunity to deploy further capital driven by a growing European venture capital market and an accelerated transition of digital driven by the Covid-19 pandemic,” the firm said.
The company is looking to raise additional cash resources to accelerate its investment strategy and increase its rate of investment to around £120m per annum.
Martin Davis, CEO Draper Esprit said: “We have been closely watching the development of our portfolio companies and the market as a whole as the post COVID-19 world emerges, and have been greatly encouraged by the increased pace of change driven by greater adoption of technology and an increased priority on digitisation.
“This enables us to play a central role in helping entrepreneurs invent the future, and this funding round will play a key role in us delivering on that vision. We are delighted also to be welcoming new investors both from the UK and Europe onto our share register as part of this fundraising, as well as receiving strong support for the transaction from our existing shareholders.”