Finland’s Lifeline Ventures Closes $163 Million Fund for Early-Stage Founders

Finland-based Lifeline Ventures has closed its fifth fund at €150 million (about $163 million).

The venture capital (VC) firm will use the fund to continue backing early-stage founders, according to a tweet posted Wednesday (May 17) by Lifeline Ventures Entrepreneur-in-Residence Pauliina Meskanen and retweeted by the firm.

“Staying true to where we started,” Lifeline Ventures Founding Partner Tim Ahopelto said in a Wednesday post on Twitter. “Our new €150 million fund at @LifelineVC invests in angel, pre-PowerPoint, pre-seed and seed stages.”

The new fund is Lifeline Ventures’ largest to date, Sifted reported Wednesday.

Lifeline was founded in 2009, invests in about 10 startups each year and will continue to focus on Finnish startups, for the most part, according to the report.

The VC has invested in 120 startups so far and was an early investor in six unicorns, including Wolt, Aiven and Oura, the report said.

Lifeline Ventures did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

“We see that the number of startups founded has been pretty stable the last three to four years, but the quality of them has increased a lot,” Ahopelto told Sifted.

This news comes about three weeks after German venture capital investment group HV Capital closed its ninth fund at €710 million (about $782 million) and said it is targeting “high-growth” firms.

HV General Partner Rainer Märkle said in a May 4 post on the firm’s LinkedIn page that the fund will let the firm “partner with outstanding entrepreneurs, who from every industry and market across the continent, are making incredible differences to the way we live our lives.”

Days before that, on May 1, new VC firm Vera Equity launched with a $20 million fund focused on early-stage FinTech companies and said it had invested in 20 startups to date.

With its first fund, Vera Equity is focused on backing FinTech entrepreneurs at the pre-seed and seed stages.

In April, it was reported that British venture firm Albion Capital had raised £80 million (about $99.8 million) for its portfolio companies.

Albion Capital invests mainly in software and healthcare and health tech firms, UK Tech News reported April 12.