French company VC Daphni He proclaims the first closing of the recent fund, Daphni Blue. The company collected EUR 200 million (about USD 215 million at current exchange rates). He expects as much as EUR 250 million (270 million dollars) by the end of the 12 months.
Some of Daphni’s most unusual previous investments include the facilities, Swile, Hubcycle and Pasqal market. In general, the company has invested in 70 European startups since 2015.
Thanks to the latest fund, Daphni plans to speculate in one other 40 startups. Limited in Daphni Blue to Crédit Muuel Arkéa, Bpifrance, European Investment Fund, Pro BTP and Swen Capital Partners.
“We have to ask ourselves how we can both stand out and support technologies or services that are balanced when we invest in new projects,” the partner of the founder Pierre-Eica Leibovici told me.
“Because there are cycles at the end of the day and we see that at a given moment either the market consolidates or is dominated by American players, or ultimately there was not enough breakthrough at the beginning.”
While most VC firms recall artificial intelligence in any other sentence, Daphni desires to put emphasis on learning (in general) as the essential factor of the next wave of innovation: natural sciences, biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics.
“Speaking of quantum calculation, quantum calculations are fundamental physics in combination with hardware and software,” said Leibovici. He also said that giant language models are primarily a breakthrough of mathematics.
As a result, Daphni recruits various profiles to affix the team. For example, a doctoral student and doctoral student are in the investment team.
“There is another element that is a new trend. The new generation of researchers is much more open to the commercialization of their basic and research used because they see all their friends around the companies,” said Leibovici.
While French universities are put aside Daphni says that a part of their budget to draw American researchers says that for this reason he didn’t resolve to focus funding.
“This coincidence. We launched so long before this trend took place,” said Leibovici. Of course, Daphni is open to investing in American researchers who are starting a startup in Europe.
Then Daphni will have to implement this newly collected capital and prove that he has found an effective investment strategy. “Lifting is not an end in itself. What is in itself is the distribution of phrases, and therefore comes out,” said Leibovici.