OTB Ventures has closed its second $185 million deeptech fund, the largest to be raised in Central and Eastern Europe. It is also among the pioneering funds to secure funding from the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), a new €1 billion initiative by the alliance aimed at supporting dual-use technologies.
- Warsaw and Amsterdam-based OTB Ventures is a leading deeptech venture capital fund in CEE, managing over $350 million. The firm launched its first fund in 2017, raising over $138 million at that time. Landmark investments from Fund I include spacetech startups ICEYE and Hydrosat.
- With a new fund, it will continue its strategy of investing in spacetech, enterprise automation & AI, cybersecurity, and fintech infrastructure startups from the region and beyond.
- The second fund will be used predominantly for Series A investments, with up to a 10% allocation for seed funding to support the growth of promising ventures at their inception.
- OTB Ventures has already made nine investments from the new fund, including a Series A investment in productivity and task mining platform KYP.ai, and seed investments in AI enterprise automation startup akirolabs and SEMRON, a German startup that produces AI chips.
- LPs include the $1 billion NATO Innovation Fund, the European Investment Fund, Isomer Capital, Foundation for Polish Science, TDJ Venture, OnDean, and Marcin Zukowski, co-founder of Snowflake.
"OTB and the NATO Innovation Fund share a passion for deep tech dual-use technologies, investing into ambitious founders to secure an enduring future for the Alliance's one billion citizens. Our first 1 billion flagship fund invests at the intersection of deep tech, defence, security, and resilience, with themes including energy, quantum computing, autonomy, climate, industrials, space, and biotechnology. OTB fully aligns with our mission," Andrea Traversone, Managing Partner at NATO Innovation Fund, emphasized.
