Eurazeo updates its second Smart City fund, now at €150 million

French-born venture capital firm Eurazeo has announced the second close of its Smart City fund II, adding €70 million since the first close just shy of a year ago. As one might imagine, the firm’s Smart City fund is earmarked to invest in energy, mobility, proptech, industrytech, and logistics startups on a global scale.

Specifically, the fund is investing in startups that are facilitating paramount societal shifts such as apid urban EV charging (Electra), e-bike sharing on subscription (DANCE), reusable packaging (Pyxo), the door-to-door carsharing fleet of teledriven vehicles (Vay), property management services (Witco) and supply chain management services for e-merchants (Cubyn).

Nearly doubling the size of a fund in less than a year is certainly no easy feat, and is not only a testament to Eurazeo’s tenacity but a seal of approval from new institutional and corporate investors including European Investment Fund (EIF), the Korean Venture Investment Corporation (KVIC), Momentum Venture Capital (SMRT, Singapore), SCG (Thailand) and German electric utility provider SWK. These new investors join existing cornerstones hailing from Europe and Asia such as carmaker Stellantis, electric utilities EDF and Mainova, mass transit operator RATP, energy giant Total, logistics firm Duisport and Thai real estate developer Sansiri as well as institutional investors PRO BTP and a number of prominent family offices.

Active in the Smart City space since 2016, the firm’s first iteration of this fund has already yielded 5 portfolio companies complete exits through public listings or acquisitions in 2021: Volta Charging, Bird, Forsee Power, Glovo, and Grab.

“Our continued momentum with multiple IPOs this year, and the clear need - substantiated yet again by COP26 - to finance companies which can truly unlock the technology bottlenecks of the climate crisis, have accelerated our speed of fundraising,” explained Eurazeo’s Matthieu Bonamy. “Cities play a huge role in climate change as they consume 78% of the world's energy and produce over 60% of the world's greenhouse gases. We think ambitious entrepreneurs and digital technologies can be part of the solution to transition towards more livable and sustainable cities.”