Seedrs, the equity crowdfunding platform backed by Tennis star Andy Murray, has itself closed a £6m crowdfunding round.
This sum adds to £4m invested last month by Woodford Investment Management, taking the total amount raised to £10m. The fundraising values Seedrs at £50m.
More than 2,000 existing shareholders and new customers, from 35 countries, invested over the course of the five-day campaign.
The average individual investment was £3,200 and the largest individual investment was £800,000 with the highest number of investors coming from the UK, Germany, Portugal, France and Italy.
“We are delighted to have received over £6 million investment from over 2,000 of our customers and community,” Seedrs chief executive Jeff Kelisky said.
“This round is yet more evidence of the market’s conviction that Seedrs is on the right path to delivering shareholder value by opening venture capital opportunities to retail investors for fast growth companies – and without Seedrs having pioneered regulated equity investment, these opportunities would have remained closed to them.”
Andy Murray added: “It is with great pride that I have made this investment into Seedrs latest funding round. As an active investor into early stage businesses through the Seedrs platform, it was important for me to take up my pre-emption rights.
“I have made a substantial follow on investment into this round to show my support for all that Seedrs has achieved since the last raise in 2015.
“The team has done some great work in supporting European startups and I’m looking forward to seeing how the business will continue to grow with this additional investment.”
Seedrs plans to use the capital raised to launch new product capabilities that will “materially increase” liquidity and return potential for investors and businesses.
The London-based company will also build out increased sales and marketing efforts, launch a select set of strategic partnerships and massively scale campaign execution through automation, machine learning and AI.