Polytech Ecosystem Ventures announces $40 million venture capital fund

Polytech Ecosystem Ventures is a new seed and early stage venture firm with offices in Lausanne, Switzerland and San Francisco, USA. The company announced today the first closing of the fund, Polytech Venture Investments SCSp, a $40 million venture capital fund headquartered in Luxembourg, aimed at seed-stage startups in Switzerland, Europe and USA.

The fund was raised from Swiss based institutional and international private investors and pursues a strategy to invest in the digitalization of industries, with emphasis on FinTech, InsurTech, Digital Health, and RetailTech.

Polytech and Ecosystem merged to create PolytechEcosystem Ventures. Polytech Ecosystem Ventures is composed of two different teams, Polytech Ventures located in the premises of EPFL Lausanne and Ecosystem Ventures, with main offices in San Francisco, California.

Alex Fries explains “We will apply the so called “Israeli model” to our Swiss/European investments by helping each company establish an early presence in the USA. Indeed, helping our start-ups open an office in Silicon Valley is enabling them to get better access to growth financing. Furthermore, it makes it easier for them to find critical sales and marketing talent with the right expertise. Lastly, for business development Silicon Valley is an ideal location, since most large companies in the world have scouts there, looking for start-ups.”

Guillaume Dubray adds “We believe that our model combines the best of both worlds. We invest in high quality Swiss/European technology at reasonable valuations and bridge them to the USA with the objective to accelerate their growth (hire sales & marketing experts, access to a large market, access to late stage funding) and increase their valuation.

Five investments
Since its inception, the fund has invested in 5 start-ups: Beekeeper(CH), Saphetor (CH), Inpher (CH /USA), BlueFox (French/American with EMEA sales office in Switzerland) and Weft (USA). The fund has a goal to make an average of one additional investment per month.

About Polytech Ecosystem Ventures
Polytech Ecosystem Ventures, is an early-stage venture capital firm with offices at the top ranked engineering school EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland and in San Francisco, USA. Polytech Ecosystem Ventures identifies Swiss, European talented entrepreneurs with exceptional technologies and business models and helps them create a bridge to the USA. Polytech Ecosystem Ventures targets early-stage companies active in the digital transformation of various industries with a specific emphasis on banking, insurance, health and retail.

(Press release)