Accel has raised a $650m fund to invest in European and Israeli early-stage companies as it points to the dramatic growth of the VC market in the region over the past two decades.
Accel is an American venture capital firm that works with early and growth-stage companies globally. Its investments include Israel-formed automation provider UiPath, which is used by legal services providers such as Konexo, Evershed Sutherland’s alternative legal services arm. In 2000 it formed Accel-KKR, which in 2019 invested around £7m in Peppermint Technologies. Accel-KKR started as a joint venture but has since become an independent company.
In a post yesterday (14 May) announcing the fund, Accel said: “When we opened our London office in 2000 and set up our first fund dedicated to Europe and Israel’s early-stage entrepreneurs, Europe’s technology ecosystem was nascent and far from an obvious choice to build an on-the-ground team. Without a unicorn in sight, many questioned Europe’s ability to generate billion-dollar outcomes. However, the Accel team has long believed that ambitious founders can come from anywhere. Almost 25 years on, the decision to make the leap and become one of the first Silicon Valley venture firms to set up a European team has proved well-placed.
“Since then, Europe has seen its first unicorn in 2005 (Skype), decacorn in 2016 (Supercell), and cloud decacorn in 2020 (UiPath), and the ecosystem has continued to gather pace. The region is a powerhouse of talent, innovation, and ambition, and we’ve had a front-row seat to the evolution of the region’s technology landscape.”
Accel points out that the European and Israeli VC market is now around half the size of that of the US (44%), with approximately $66B invested in 2023 vs the US’ $150B. This is in stark contrast to the $1.1B invested in Europe and Israel in 2003. It says that there are now 360+ VC-backed European and Israeli-founded unicorns.
“With Europe and Israel producing world-class talent in areas such as AI (Celonis, Chainalysis, Rasa, Shift Technology, Synthesia, UiPath), cybersecurity (Cyera, Filigran, Oasis, Snyk), fintech (GoCardless, Lydia, Monzo, Super, Swan, Trade Republic) and the modern data stack (Conduktor, Lightdash), we can’t wait to support the next generation of founders and see how they shape the future!”