Icos Capital raises €50M IC Fund III from Akzo Nobel, Bühler, Wuppermann and City of Rotterdam

Corporates play an important role for startups and VCs and often combine direct and fund investments to get access to external innovation. After a 2-year fundraising journey that even included the bankruptcy of one LP, the Dutch VC Icos Capital announces today the first closing of its third fund Icos Capital Fund III at €50M. The fund investors comprise the City of Rotterdam and the corporates Akzo Nobel from the Netherlands, Bühler from Switzerland and Wuppermann from Germany. Peter van Gelderen, one of the 3 GPs managing the fund, describes their investment philosophy as collaborative corporate venturing and emphasizes the close cooperation with the 3 multinationals that don’t have inhouse corporate VC units. According to Peter, new corporate relationships take a lot of time and many meetings until the board makes an LP commitment in your VC fund.

Icos Capital was founded in 2006 in Amsterdam and invested amongst others in Rainmaker, Bioactor, Metal Membranes and Photanol. Peter wants to add more financial and corporate LPs soon aiming at a fund size of €100M. The investable capital will be used to build a portfolio of 12-18 startups in the chemical, food and advanced materials industries. Learning from the past Icos Capital now follows a multi-stage investment strategy because most fund investors believe that a pure focus on early stage startups is too risky and doesn’t produce good returns. Now the only challenge is to find the best startups to invest in.


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