Graphcore founder and CEO Nigel Toon is set to launch a new growth-stage deeptech fund, following a bruising year for the sector in Europe that saw a number of darlings fall by the wayside.
Toon, who is still chief at the AI chip maker following its acquisition by SoftBank last year, is launching the vehicle with Ekaterina Almasque, who was previously general partner at Finnish VC OpenOcean, according to Companies House filings.
The new fund is called BlankPage Capital, will launch in 2025 and invest at growth stages in the UK and Europe, according to a company website seen by Sifted. A pop-up on the site invites LP investors and deeptech companies to get in touch.
While Europe boasts world-leading research institutions, commercialising science-based technology has proved difficult in the region. In 2024, a number of once hyped unicorns, including EV maker Arrival, electric plane startup Lillium and battery company Northvolt all filed for bankruptcy.
Toon’s Graphcore, which was once touted as an Nvidia competitor and develops cutting edge processors specialised for AI, was bought by SoftBank for less than the $730m the company raised from investors, last year.
Each of those companies faced their own unique challenges, but together show the struggles of scaling and entering production in Europe: a continent with less capital than the US and less access to a cheap supply chain than China.
Toon and Almasque’s new fund will look to address the first of those. Limited access to growth-stage funding has been one of the key barriers to success for Europe’s deeptechs, say industry leaders.
The “missing ingredient” for Graphcore had been “scale and level of investment”, said Toon at the time of acquisition.
“We’ve been successful in raising capital for the business — but the amount of capital we’ve had access to is tiny when compared to other major players in the space.”
He added that the SoftBank acquisition gave Graphcore access to the kind of capital that had become “more challenging” to access in Europe.
Sifted approached Toon and Almasque for comment.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/graphcore-ceo-to-launch-deeptech-vc-fund/
