Hard2beat grows deeptech fund to $29M to write bigger cheques
What's the deal? Poland's Hard2beatDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has raised the capitalisation of its venture fund from US$21M to US$27.6M (≈$29 million), most of it from state-backed PFR Ventures. It remains the largest fund operating under the PFR Starter programme.
Who put in the money? PFR Ventures lifted its commitment from US$14.1M to US$20M. The remaining US$7.58M comes from private investors and the management team, whose partners have invested over US$1M of their own money.
What's the endgame? The second close does not change the number of planned investments. Hard2beat still aims to build a portfolio of about 24 deeptech companies, but the bigger budget lets it write larger initial cheques and reserve more capital for follow-on rounds.
The fund backs dual-use projects, cybersecurity, software infrastructure, advanced hardware, and medtech and biotech. Its average first ticket has passed US$500K, with more than US$1M earmarked per company across the investment cycle.
Why now? Hard2beat sees round sizes and valuations rising even at pre-seed and seed. "In good deeptech companies, a million złoty is often no longer enough to build a meaningful investor position," said partner Maciej Frankowicz (translated from Polish).
What's next? Some of the new capital will fund The Moat, an event connecting deeptech startups with investors from Poland, Europe and the US. The first edition, on September 23 in Warsaw, expects over 200 participants and representatives of more than 30 foreign funds.
Hard2beat is roughly halfway through building its target portfolio. "Deep tech today requires larger rounds than a few years ago, so the fund has to keep up with how the market is changing," said partner Maciej Zawadziński.
The signal: Capital alone no longer wins founders. Polish startups increasingly need backers able to co-invest at European and American scale — and local funds are raising more to stay in the game for the rounds that follow.
Read more: mamstartup.pl
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
