The figure strikes the imagination, a trillion of dollars. A symbolic bar crossed by a few rare companies in the world, almost exclusively American or Chinese, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, Tencent. In this closed club, no European player and it is at this deficiency that Cherry Ventures, a capital fund based in Berlin, intends to help change.
While investment in European tech fell to $ 45 billion in 2024, three times less than in the United States according to Atomico, Cherry Ventures refuses to give in to what he describes as “Speech of decline”. The fund raised in the 1st quarter of $ 500 million in the Early-Stage fund and a “Opportunity Fund” in the 1st quarter to strengthen the best participations in Serie B and following. The objective is both to support the first steps of young startups and to support, over time, those which can aim for a global scale.
An ambition, several fractures
In his open letter, Cherry Ventures wants “Contact conventional expectations” And respond to a 2020 decade marked by the emergence of new technologies, and especially artificial intelligence. The fund stresses that Europe today has 35,000 startups in the priming phase, more than any other region in the world, and that its technological workforce has been multiplied by seven since 2015.
But this proactive mobilization does not solve structural imbalances. The financing scale remains asymmetrical against the United States and China. Europe suffers from a lack of patient capital to support companies beyond the course of 10 or 20 billion valuation. Transatlantic ompos, inverted mergers, or early acquisitions remain too much the norm. The symbolic threshold of the trillion is, for the time being, reserved for companies capable of fully controlling global industrial channels, massively capturing digital demand or operating on colossal margins, conditions which still widely escape European actors too isolated.
A generation to build
If Cherry Ventures does not deny the limits of the system, the fund wants to initiate a transition. “The foundations of Europe are solid (…) but our culture of innovation must change”can we read in their message. This involves the need for cooperation between entrepreneurs, researchers, investors and public authorities but also is based on a new generation of founders, from mimicry to leadership. “In the early 2000s, European startups mostly copied American models (…). The ecosystem must reach a maturity point where a second or third generation of founders takes over ”observes Filip Dames, co -founder of the fund.
Yet startups like Supercell, Revolut, Klarna or Uipath have shown that a global scale was accessible from Europe, but none have yet crossed the Trillion threshold, a still very high walk.
Value, beyond valuation
Beyond the encrypted ambition, one of the control ideas of the leaders of the fund is more lasting than in valuation. “A global transformer innovation requires investors turned towards the horizon, not towards the exit”says the fund. A form of opposite view in the rapid rotation logic of portfolios which has so far dominated European venture capital. The idea is not only to bring out a giant, but to allow technological companies to register in long time, like what certain family or industrial companies of the Old Continent have succeeded.
Creating a business at 1,000 billion in Europe supposes much more than a capital of capital and requires a transformation of the frame, mentalities, waiting horizons. A well asked question, it remains to be seen whether the European ecosystem will agree to answer it collectively.
