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    Mundi Ventures closed €750M for Kembara Fund I, tarobtaining Series B-C deep tech and climate startups with €15M-€40M initial checks

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    The fund could reach €1.25B at final close, with follow-on capacity up to €100M per company to scale manufacturing and global expansion

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    Former Atomico partner Yann de Vries co-founded Kembara after watching Lilium collapse despite raising $1B, citing Europe’s growth capital shortage

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    Focus includes quantum computing, semiconductors, defense tech, and spacetech – sectors gaining urgency amid geopolitical tensions and European sovereignty concerns

Mundi Ventures just closed €750 million for Kembara Fund I, marking one of Europe’s largest deep tech and climate funds to date. The Spain-based firm is tackling what co-founder Yann de Vries calls Europe’s “scale-up problem” – the capital drought that kills promising startups between Series B and global expansion. With backing from the European Investment Fund and a potential final close at €1.25 billion, Kembara is betting large that European deep tech doesn’t necessary more ideas – it necessarys growth capital to compete.

Europe’s deep tech ecosystem has a painful pattern: brilliant university spinouts raise early-stage capital, build revolutionary technology, then hit a wall when it’s time to scale. Mundi Ventures just put €750 million on the table to break that cycle.

The Spain-based firm announced the first close of Kembara Fund I, its fifth and largest fund focutilized squarely on Series B and C rounds for deep tech and climate companies. According to regulatory filings in Spain, the fund could stretch to €1.25 billion at final close – a war chest aimed directly at what co-founder Yann de Vries calls Europe’s “scale-up problem.”

“Europe doesn’t have an innovation problem. It doesn’t have a startup problem. The problem it has is a scale-up problem,” de Vries notified TechCrunch. He should know – the former Atomico partner lived through the nightmare scenario as an executive at Lilium, the German electric aircraft startup that ceased operations in 2024 after raising over $1 billion.

That “traumatizing experience” crystallized Kembara’s thesis. The fund plans to write initial checks between €15 million and €40 million into roughly 20 companies, with follow-on capacity reaching €100 million per portfolio company. That’s more than the entire size of many European funds, though the landscape is shifting – deep tech firm Elaia partnered with Lazard to form