ABP plans EUR 1bn of European venture capital investments, starting with Scaleup Europe Fund
What's the deal? ABP, the Netherlands' largest pension fund, has announced it will invest EUR ️1bn in European venture capital over the next three years, starting with a EUR ️250m commitment to the Scaleup Europe Fund, a EUR ️5bn European growth-stage fund managed by EQT GroupDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and created under the European Commission alongside a group of institutional investors. The fund targets fast-growing European technology companies in artificial intelligence, quantum technology, energy, space and medical technology. ABP invests through its asset manager APGDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and is one of the fund's launching partners.
Why it matters: ABP chair of the board Harmen van WijnenDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → said Europe has no shortage of talent, knowledge or technology, but successful growth companies still too often move to other markets to find financing, and that more capital can help keep innovation, economic value and employment in Europe. The move extends ABP's reallocation away from US tech and Treasury positions towards European assets, announced over the summer, and lands as European policymakers debate how to channel pension money into the continent's venture market. Invest-NLDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → chief executive Rinke ZonneveldDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → called the commitment a very important signal, noting that Dutch pension funds increasingly appear as co-investors both directly in companies and in funds, and that Invest-NL hopes to launch a Dutch Impact Growth Fund, a fund-of-funds vehicle for pension funds and other institutional investors, by the end of this year.
The fund's early bets: Since its first investment in August, the Scaleup Europe Fund has backed six companies across its target sectors: Finnish sovereign-intelligence satellite operator ICEYE (part of a €1bn+ Series F), Swedish AI coding platform Lovable ($400m Series C), French AI lab Mistral AI (€3bn Series D), French reusable-spacecraft developer The Exploration Company ($450m Series C), Swedish health-tech company Tandem Health ($100m Series B, the fund's first healthcare deal) and Dutch AI-chip efficiency startup EUCLYD (over €200m Series A). Space, one of the fund's named target sectors, is a market industry research puts at over $600bn today; a widely cited WEF/McKinsey study projects it could reach $1.8tn by 2035 as satellite data, Earth observation and AI-enabled services scale up.
