London-based Dawn Capital, a B2B software investor, announced on Monday that it has raised $700M (approximately €657M) to invest in the next generation of global software leaders.
Investors in the fund include leading sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, endowments, funds of funds, family offices, high net-worth individuals, as well as Dawn’s portfolio founders.
The fundraiser includes the $620M (approximately €582M) flagship fund Dawn V — the largest dedicated early-stage B2B software fund ever raised in Europe.
Dawn V plans to support European software innovators at Series A and B stages with an initial investment of $10M (approximately €9.3M) to $40M (approximately €37.5M) and additional funding for follow-on rounds.
The new capital also comprises an $80M (approximately €75.1M) follow-on fund, Dawn Opportunities III — a later-stage fundraised to strengthen Dawn’s ability to invest in its sector winners from the Series C stage onwards.
The firm will be able to continue supporting European B2B software companies through their entire life cycle, from Series A to exit, with the help of the funds.
In addition to the funding, Dawn Capital also announced the promotion of Hannah Gubbins to Partner for her contributions to the company.
Since joining the team from Inflexion Private Equity in April 2020, Hannah has played a pivotal role in informing Dawn’s strategy and raising the firm’s profile among global investors.
Hannah Gubbins, Partner at Dawn Capital, says, “I’m honoured to have joined Dawn’s Partnership, and it is incredibly rewarding to be part of a firm that continually champions and recognises team members’ contributions and achievements. Our promise to European
entrepreneurs that we will support them to scale their products, teams, and capabilities and expand into new global markets. With our newly raised funds, we will invest further in our platform to best support our portfolio companies over the coming decade, from expanding our pool of advisors to adding to our in-house talent offering. We are also transforming Dawn into a data-led business to harness the power of technology to make us a better investor.
Dawn Capital: What you need to know
Since its inception, Dawn has raised over $2B from leading global investors to invest in best-of-breed European B2B software.
The firm has invested in over 80 category-leading companies founded across 16 European countries, including multi-$bn leaders Mimecast, iZettle, Tink, LeanIX, and currently established unicorns Collibra, Dataiku and Quantexa.
Besides funding, Dawn also offers invaluable mentorship, depth of experience, strategic guidance, and a unique founder community.
Using Dawn V and Dawn Opportunities III, the firm will double down on its established strategy of backing founders in building category-defining software across the technology stack, from infrastructure to end-user applications.
Dawn Capital has already made three exciting investments from the Dawn V fund. They are Fonoa (embedded insurance platform), Cover Genius, and FlowX.AI (application modernisation platform).
The flagship fund reached its ‘hard cap’ this year, with 50 per cent of commitments from existing LPs and 50 per cent from new investors across the US, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
Haakon Overli, General Partner at Dawn Capital, says, “Over the last 18 months, we have all witnessed the challenging macro environment. We founded Dawn to support founders building
global B2B software leaders from Europe, and this ethos has not changed. We firmly believe it is a great point in the cycle to be investing and see the opportunity in Europe only increasing. Our two decades of experience have shown us that companies forged in challenging times are forced to deliver even more value, with compelling propositions and deep-rooted resilience. Our new funds will enable us to remain laser-focused on opportunities, with the capital to meaningfully support founders from Series A to exit. We can’t wait to see where our future entrepreneurs take us with our new funds and greatly appreciate the support of all our investors, team, and founders.”
Norman Fiore, General Partner at Dawn Capital, says, “We are at the very beginning of another major technology shift. As our entrepreneurs like to remind us, AI has been around for a long
time. The change today is that AI has pushed its way from the engineering teams into the boardroom. Its coming prevalence makes it both an investment area in itself as well as a disruptor to every software category we’ve been investing in since we founded Dawn. We were therefore determined to raise funds of commensurate scale to the enormous opportunity before us.”
Read the orginal article: https://siliconcanals.com/news/startups/dawn-capital-raises-657m/
