Secretive London-based VC Hedosophia has raised a dedicated secondaries fund, multiple sources tell Sifted, as the niche asset class becomes ever more popular with big name VCs looking to build up their stakes in Europe’s maturing tech darlings.
Hedosophia completed the first close in December last year with $200-300m in the pot, according to people with knowledge of the situation. Sifted understands that the firm is still raising for its secondaries fund and hopes to close at a larger figure further down the line.
Launched in 2012 by hugely influential and infamously media-shy financier Ian Osborne, Hedosophia has backed some of the best known names in tech. The VC was an early backer of Spotify, Uber and Alibaba, and sits on the cap table of the likes of neobank Monzo and payments scaleup Stripe.
The new secondaries fund will look to back growth-stage companies in the US and Europe, with a core focus on direct secondary deals and strip sales, Sifted understands.
Hedosophia participated in a €340m secondary share sale at secondhand fashion market place Vinted in October. It’s not known whether that investment came from the firm’s secondary fund.
Sifted has approached Hedosophia for comment.
Rise of secondaries
The VC is one of the most secretive firms in tech. Its website is a standalone homepage without details about portfolio companies, external links or contact information. It’s been reported that founders must agree not to talk about Hedosophia’s investment when they ink a deal with the VC.
LPs in the firm’s various funds include a number of pension funds, according to PitchBook, such as Sweden’s AP Fonden 3 and US-based California Public Employees’ Retirement System, alongside Germany’s state-backed vehicle KfW Capital.
Hedosophia is one of a number of big name investors making secondaries plays in VC right now, as they look to take advantage of the maturing asset class and jump onto the cap table of the growing number of late-stage tech companies.
Sequoia officially launched a $500m secondaries fund, in partnership with Brookfield Asset Management, called Pinegrove in 2024. Salesforce and ByteDance-backer NEA raised nearly the same amount for its own secondaries vehicle the same year.
They join a crop of new secondaries-specific funds in Europe. Switzerland-based Giano Capital completed a €20m first close in 2023 and Launchbay Capital raised a similar amount at the start of 2024. Isomer Capital, best known for its VC fund of funds, said it had closed over 20% of a £100m target for a dedicated secondaries fund last year, too.
European startups and their investors are increasingly looking to secondaries to access liquidity otherwise cut off as public markets have remained effectively shut over the past couple of years.
In January this year, 78% of tech companies said that they were likely to sell secondaries, according to a survey of 2,500 respondents at private companies in Europe, the UK and the US by equity management platform Ledgy.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/hedosophia-raises-secondaries-fund/
