Runa Capital is an international

venture capital firm Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

headquartered in

Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small land ...

that invests in

deep tech Deep technology (deep tech) or hard tech is a classification of organization, or more typically startup company, with the expressed objective of providing technology solutions based on substantial scientific or engineering challenges. They presen ...

( AI,

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

middleware Middleware is a type of computer software that provides services to software applications beyond those available from the operating system. It can be described as "software glue". Middleware makes it easier for software developers to implement c ...

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

, etc), cloud

business software Business software (or a business application) is any software or set of computer programs used by business users to perform various business functions. These business applications are used to increase productivity, measure productivity, and perf ...

fintech Fintech, a portmanteau of "financial technology", refers to firms using new technology to compete with traditional financial methods in the delivery of financial services. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, and big data are ...

edutech Educational technology (commonly abbreviated as edutech, or edtech) is the combined use of computer hardware, software, and educational theory and practice to facilitate learning. When referred to with its abbreviation, edtech, it often refers ...

and

digital health Digital health is a discipline that includes digital care programs, technologies with health, healthcare, living, and society to enhance the efficiency of healthcare delivery and to make medicine more personalized and precise. It uses informati ...

startup A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...

s in early stages. From 2010 through 2022 Runa Capital raised 3 funds and invested in over 100 companies in more than 14 countries of

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...

and North America, including

Nginx Nginx (pronounced "engine x" ) is a web server that can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache. The software was created by Igor Sysoev and publicly released in 2004. Nginx is free and open-source software ...

MariaDB MariaDB is a community-developed, commercially supported fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. Development is led by some of the ...

Zopa Zopa is a British financial services company which offers deposit accounts and credit cards. It began as the world's first peer-to-peer lending company in 2005 and gained a full banking licence in 2020. The peer-to-peer side of its business cl ...

Brainly Brainly is a company based in Kraków, Poland, with headquarters in New York City. It is social learning platform where students and educators solve their academic problems together Brainly's mission is to inspire students to share and explore ...

, drchrono, Smava, and Mambu.

History

Runa Capital was founded by technological entrepreneurs

Serg Bell Serg Bell (born as ''Serguei Beloussov'' on August 2, 1971 in Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union) is a Singaporean businessman entrepreneur, investor and speaker, the founder and chairman of the board of Schaffhausen Institute of Technology an ...

and

Ilya Zubarev Ilya, Iliya, Ilia, Ilja, or Ilija (russian: Илья́, Il'ja, , or russian: Илия́, Ilija, ; uk, Ілля́, Illia, ; be, Ілья́, Iĺja ) is the East Slavic form of the male Hebrew name Eliyahu (Eliahu), meaning "My God is Yahu/Jah." ...

(founders of

Acronis Acronis International GmbH, simply referred to as Acronis, is a Swiss technology company with its corporate headquarters in Schaffhausen, Switzerland and global headquarters in Singapore. Acronis develops on-premises and cloud software with uniqu ...

and Parallels), and their

MIPT ''N''-Methyl-''N''-isopropyltryptamine (MiPT) is a psychedelic tryptamine, closely related to DMT, DiPT and Miprocin. Chemistry MiPT base, unlike many other tryptamines in their freebase form, does not decompose rapidly in the presence of ligh ...

mate Dmitry Chikhachev. The idea of the venture firm took shape in 2009 and was formally incorporated in 2010. The partners contributed their own money into the first fund and raised capital from friends and other international investors including Achim Weiss and Andreas Gauger, founders of German hosting provider 1&1, and Edward Nicholson, former

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especiall ...

of Brunswick-UBS in Russia. In 2011, Andre Bliznyuk, former head of Russia/

CIS Cis or cis- may refer to: Places * Cis, Trentino, in Italy * In Poland: ** Cis, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, south-central ** Cis, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, north Math, science and biology * cis (mathematics) (cis(''θ'')), a trigonome ...

Equity Capital Markets Group in Goldman Sachs joined Runa Capital as investment partner. In 2022, the firm promoted its principials Konstantin Vinogradov and Michael Fanfant to general partners focusing on Europe and the U.S., respectively. As of June 2022, the firm had over 427 million dollars under management in 3 funds.

Funds

* Runa Capital I, firm's first namesake fund was launched in 2010, reached its final size of $135 million by 2012 and was focused on investments from

seed A seed is an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering, along with a food reserve. The formation of the seed is a part of the process of reproduction in seed plants, the spermatophytes, including the gymnosperm and angiosper ...

to Series B stage. The initial idea was to fund globally oriented

Eastern European Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whi ...

startups in the fields of cloud computing, machine learning, virtualization, mobile and internet apps, but later the partners expanded their investment area to Europe and USA. * Runa Capital II was launched in 2014 and reached $135 million by 2016 with large commitments from the first fund's backers. The second fund aimed at Series A and B rounds. The firm's new office was opened in

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

in 2015. * Runa Capital III exceeded the target sum of $135 and reached $157 million in May 2020. The third fund followed the focus on

with additional interest towards

quantum computing Quantum computing is a type of computation whose operations can harness the phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement. Devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers. Thou ...

startups. * Runa Capital Opportunity Fund I was launched in May 2022 and raised $69 million by Autumn 2022.

Investments

Runa Capital invests from $1 million to $10 million, largely in

Series A round A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exc ...

s. From 2010 through 2022 it invested in over 100 companies, equally split between North America and

Affiliated funds

Quantum Wave (QWave) headquartered in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the capital city, state capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financ ...

is a $30 million early-stage fund focused on companies working in the field of

quantum technology Quantum technology is an Emerging technologies, emerging field of physics and engineering, encompassing technologies that rely on the properties of quantum mechanics, especially quantum entanglement, quantum superposition, and quantum tunnelling ...

. Serg Bell is QWave's venture partner. According to

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximat ...

, QWave effectively served as a " materials science" arm for Runa Capital. Its notable investments include

Swiss Swiss may refer to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Places * Swiss, Missouri *Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports *Swiss Internati ...

quantum cryptography Quantum cryptography is the science of exploiting quantum mechanical properties to perform cryptographic tasks. The best known example of quantum cryptography is quantum key distribution which offers an information-theoretically secure solutio ...

startup ID Quantique that was acquired by

SK Telecom SK Telecom Co., Ltd. ( or ) is a South Korean wireless telecommunications operator and former film distributor and is part of the SK Group, one of the country's largest chaebols. It leads the local market with 50.5 percent share as of 2008. ...

in 2018.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://runacap.com/ Venture capital firms of the United States Financial services companies based in California Companies based in Palo Alto, California Financial services companies established in 2010 2010 establishments in California