Image credits: Accel
Accel, an early and growth-stage VC firm, has raised more than $3B (approx €2.5B) across three new funds to back companies in the US, Europe, and Israel.
Palo Alto-based VC announced its fifteenth US early-stage fund of $650M (approx €546M), a seventh early-stage fund for Europe and Israel of $650M (approx €546M), and a sixth growth fund of $1.75B (approx €1.47B).
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The sixth growth fund comes after the announcement of a $2.3B (approx €1.93B) global later-stage fund last December.
20 to 30 companies per fund
According to Accel partner Rich Wong, the VC plans to invest in around 20 to 30 companies per fund on average, reports Techcrunch. The company will invest somewhere around $50M (approx €42M) to $75M (approx €63M) in a growth fund and $75M (approx €63M) to $100M (approx €84M) in global leaders fund.
Since 2019, around ten companies Accel invested in have gone public, and the list includes Bumble, Slack, CrowdStrike, Deliveroo, and UiPath. Notably, UiPath is the latest to go public at a valuation of $40B (approx €33.6M).
Early-stage VC
Founded in 1983 by Arthur Patterson and Jim Swartz, Accel is a VC firm that invests in people and their companies from the earliest days through all phases of private company growth.
Some portfolio companies include Atlassian, Braintree, Cloudera, CrowdStrike, DJI, Dropbox, Dropcam, Etsy, Facebook, Flipkart, FreshWorks, Jet, Qualtrics, Slack, Spotify, Supercell, UiPath, and Vox Media.
This year, Accel has seen around 19 unicorns created in its portfolio, as of May 2021. Tiger Global Management leads the list with 45 new unicorns and Insight Partners at second place with 22 unicorns.
The recent investment includes Flink, and Trade Republic Unit.
Scout program in Europe
Last month, the US VC launched its scout programme in Europe. Scouts in the “Starters” programme are allocated $200K (approx €168K) each to find, invest in and grow European startups with huge potential. In the US, Accel has supported around 200 companies through its Scout program, launched in 2017.
“Today’s exceptional founders are not bound by geography in the pursuit and realisation of their visions, and we think the next generation of technology leaders will follow this same pattern — taking local inspiration to the global stage. We endeavour (as we always have) to be there from the very start and for every step along the way,” says the company in the press release.
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