- Creandum has closed Fund VIII at €668 million, its largest fund to date.
- Half of the fund will fund new investments, and the other half will support follow-on rounds for around 30 startups.
- Over the past year, the firm has tripled its SF team to pursue US founders.
Staffan Helgesson founded Creandum in 2003 with two Swedish pension funds as anchor investors and a €40 million fund. Today, the firm closed its 8th fund at €668 million, which is nearly 17x the size of the first.
Creandum VIII, its largest fund to date, will invest in around 30 startups across the pre-seed to Series A stages. The fund will allocate half to new investments and half to follow-on investments.
The fund is approximately a third larger in euros than Fund VII, which closed at €500 million in June 2024, and Fund VI, which closed at $500 million in 2022. It is backed by several US and European institutional investors and is now closed to new investors.
A founder’s early move to San Francisco
Helgesson moved from Startupfactory, a mobile internet investor backed by SoftBank and Investor AB, into venture and has been in European venture since 1999. He chose San Francisco over London, describing it as a pincer movement on the traditional European VC hub.
Creandum opened its SF office in 2012 and its London office in 2021.
The firm is growing with a new SF office, a larger investment team and a platform team working with colleagues in Stockholm, London and Berlin. Creandum points out that around half of all capital invested in European tech last year came from the US, while the reverse is not true for US tech funding going into Europe. They also note that US venture firms are now competing for deals in Europe.
“After nearly 25 years in venture, one belief has only grown stronger: it’s the founders you back early that matter most. With Fund VIII, we remain focused on one simple thing — finding the boldest and most ambitious early-stage founders in Europe — and increasingly in the US — and being the first to back them. That core focus is what led us to incredible companies like Lovable, Spotify, Modal, Black Forest Labs, and Rillet, to name but a few,” said Helgesson, Creandum’s founder and partner.
US funds increasingly lead later-stage rounds
Creandum says one in six of its early-stage investments is now worth $1 billion or more. The firm led Lovable’s $ 15 million pre-Series A in February 2025. Lovable then raised $400 million at $13.3 billion in August 2026, led by Menlo Ventures and EQT’s Scaleup Europe Fund.
Black Forest Labs, where Creandum also has an investment, closed a $300 million Series B at $3.25 billion in August 2026, led by AMP and Salesforce Ventures.
Meanwhile, Modal raised $355 million at $4.65 billion in August 2026, led by General Catalyst and Redpoint. Rillet, another AI accounting software company, is another example. Creandum co-led their $13.5 million seed in 2024. In August 2026, they raised $100 million at a $1 billion valuation, led by ICONIQ.
“Creandum believed in us early, when we were just a small team coming out of stealth. They have been our first call ever since,” Nicolas Kopp, founder and CEO of Rillet, said in the announcement.
A big fund in a challenging market
The raise is massive in the context of total European VC fundraising. KPMG, using PitchBook data, puts European VC fundraising at $14.9 billion across 111 funds through the end of September. Fund VIII accounts for about 5% of that.
Tech Funding News also covered equivalent fund announcements: Earlybird Fund VIII €360 million, QuantumLight €432 million, Seedcamp €279 million.
The financial requirements are huge. TFN’s own figures suggest that if you put half of the $750M into around 30 new investments, you’re looking at an average initial investment of circa $12.5M. That’s more than the norm for an early-stage round, and of course the bigger the investment, the bigger the exit you need. Creandum’s portfolio now includes well over 200 companies, and it has advisory teams in Stockholm, London, Berlin and San Francisco.
A big issue for Fund VIII is around long-term ownership. Creandum is very good at spotting early-stage startups, but its position in the company could be diluted as other funds lead later rounds.
