Five EU member states and the European Investment Bank Group (European Investment Bank, European Investment Fund) have signed the European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI) mandate, a fund of funds that will channel much-needed late-stage growth capital to promising European innovators.
ETCI will deepen Europe’s scale-up venture capital (VC) markets by bridging gaps in financing availability, especially for companies seeking to raise amounts of over €50 million. It will help create an asset class for European institutional investors to diversify their portfolios, thus maintaining a continuous flow of funding to European scale-ups. Such positive self-sustained dynamic in the European high-tech landscape will nurture home-grown innovation and entrepreneurship.
Europe’s tech start-ups often do not have sufficient capital to compete on a global scale and are pushed to relocate overseas. Closing this scale-up gap could create many highly skilled jobs and boost growth.
ETCI – the cornerstone of the Pan-European Scale Up Initiative unveiled in February 2022 in Paris during a summit organised under the French Presidency of the Council of the EU – will pool public resources from participating member states and the EIB Group to make significant investments into large-scale VC funds, which will, in turn, provide growth financing to European tech champions.
ETCI has secured commitments from Spain (€1 billion), Germany (€1 billion), France (€1 billion), Italy (€150 million) and Belgium (€100 million) during the initial subscription period. The EIB Group has deployed an additional €500 million, thus bringing the grand total to €3.75 billion at this stage.
