Canada-based venture capital firm Inovia Capital has announced its second growth fund, worth $450 million, as it seeks to make its presence felt in Europe.
Twitter chairman Patrick Pichette, a partner at Inovia, told Coins2Day that the new fund will invest in tech-focused growth-stage companies.
“We expect to have a meaningful portion of our investments now coming from Europe,” he said.
It is a strategic decision to focus on fast growing companies in Europe and not companies in earlier stages of development.
The latest fund brings Inovia’s total capital under management to over $1.5 billion. Inovia’s first growth fund of $400 million was announced in 2019.
Seeking an early stage company to invest in, Inovia previously founded the retail payment system company Lightspeed, which has since listed on the NYSE and is now valued at about $9 billion.
Pichette is now playing a larger role in the European technology industry, in part as a founding member of the CDL Oxford, a jury member of a prize given by Falling Walls in Germany, and as a Board member of Zwift, the cycling app firm which is challenging Peloton in the online fitness platform market.
“What we don’t do is technology that does not scale up fast or life sciences. I’m very bullish about the opportunity in Europe,” he said.