US and UK-based venture capital firm AV8 Ventures has closed its €150m ($170m) debut fund after securing the full amount from insurance firm Allianz, TechCrunch reported today.
AV8 will invest in seed and series A-stage startups in the digital health, big data, artificial intelligence, mobility and enterprise technology sectors.
The fund has already been investing for approximately a year and currently boasts seven portfolio companies including Locomation, an autonomous trucking technology spinout of Carnegie Mellon University.
The portfolio also includes women’s healthcare platform Alpha Medical and Contract Wrangler, which relies on machine learning to extract information from vast quantities of contracts, as well as weather forecasting service PlanetIQ.
Boiler installation service Hometree has also received funding from AV8, as has property transaction services priovider M-Qube and workforce management platform developer Swift Shift.
AV8 is led by George Ugras, who was head of technology provider IBM’s corporate venturing subsidiary, IBM Ventures, until February 2018, and Miles Kirby, managing director of mobile chipmaker Qualcomm’s investment vehicle, Qualcomm Ventures, in Europe from 2012 to 2015.
The fund is targeting 10 investments per year and has hired two full-time partners and five venture partners to pursue that goal.
Despite boasting Allianz as its sole backer, AV8 does not operate as a corporate VC fund. It sees itself in line with players such as Sapphire Ventures, which is backed by enterprise software producer SAP while remaining an independent entity.
Ugras told TechCrunch: “We think of ourselves as builders versus transactors. Quite often in venture you will notice investors get perked up around transactions, but the magic happens in-between rounds.”
