Emblem, a relatively new European VC firm based in Paris, has announced the final closing of its first fund, securing \u20ac80 million in total (approximately $85 million at current exchange rates). This achievement is notable, especially considering the current funding environment, where venture funding has fallen for the third year in a row, according to Atomico’s latest State of European Tech report.<\/p>\n
The VC industry is facing challenges, with acquisitions and IPOs not happening at the moment. As a result, VC as an investment category is less attractive than it used to be. Several VC firms are struggling to raise follow-on funds despite the current artificial intelligence boom, which could potentially represent a huge investment opportunity.<\/p>\n
Despite these challenges, Emblem was able to reach its hard cap, the maximum amount it had originally set to raise. The firm was founded by B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte de Raph\u00e9lis Soissan and Guillaume Durao, who had already made some interesting investments as business angels before creating Emblem. They invested in crypto trading card game Sorare, pet insurance startup Dalma, and cultivated meat company Gourmey, among others.<\/p>\n
Emblem’s strategy is to make 25 to 30 investments with its initial fund, with a focus on seed investments ranging from \u20ac500,000 to \u20ac3 million. The firm is willing to follow another lead investor if there’s a good opportunity, too. Since its first closing in March 2023, Emblem has already invested in 16 startups, including:<\/p>\n
Emblem’s portfolio is diverse, with investments in various areas and geographical regions. The firm has made 16 investments, with eight in France, six in the Nordics (Denmark, Sweden), one in the U.S., and one in Italy. Emblem’s core focus remains on France and the Nordic tech ecosystem.<\/p>\n
Emblem has more than 200 limited partners who invested in the first fund, including family offices and tech entrepreneurs, such as the founders of Unity, Pleo, Qonto, 3shape, Spendesk, Voodoo, Pennylane, JobandTalent, Ledger, and Zendesk. The rest of the fund has been raised from several funds of funds, as well as commitments from both EIFO (the Danish sovereign fund) and Bpifrance (the French sovereign fund).<\/p>\n
Emblem is already thinking about its next fund, which should be roughly the same size as this one. The firm’s managing partners, B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte de Raph\u00e9lis Soissan and Guillaume Durao, are aware that they won’t need to raise funds for a while, but they also know that they need to stay on-market to continue investing in startups. As de Raph\u00e9lis Soissan said, "Now we’ve got a bit of time when we won\u2019t need to raise. So we\u2019re going to savor it. But you never want to be off-market."<\/p>\n\n Emblem VC Firm Announces Final Closing of First Fund A Significant Achievement in the Current Funding Environment Emblem, a relatively new European VC firm based in Paris, has announced the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[914,913,539],"class_list":["post-3609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-emblem","tag-seed-fund","tag-vc"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2025\/02\/EMBLEM-20186R-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Source Link<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"