- CriteriaCaixa has renamed its venture arm Criteria Capital Risc and is targeting €300 million in early-stage investment by 2030.
- The capital runs through two evergreen funds that back biotech, AI, photonics, cybersecurity, and software infrastructure.
- Nearly 70% of the current portfolio is held in Spanish companies, with Portugal, Europe, and North America treated selectively.
Most venture funds work against the clock. Raise, deploy, exit, repeat, usually within a decade. CriteriaCaixa‘s investment arm doesn’t have one.
Now renamed Criteria Capital Risc, the manager is targeting €300 million in early-stage biotech and deeptech investment by 2030, capital with no fixed exit deadline attached.
From Caixa Capital Risc to Criteria Capital Risc
The manager, founded in 2002 and a wholly owned subsidiary of CriteriaCaixa since 2013, was previously known as Caixa Capital Risc. CriteriaCaixa says the rebrand does not change its structure or portfolio. It is meant to align the manager’s name with its current position after more than two decades of investing across the Iberian Peninsula.
CriteriaCaixa itself is the exclusive vehicle managing the assets of the ‘la Caixa’ Foundation, with a gross asset value the company says reached €45 billion in 2025, though a separate report put the figure closer to €37 billion as of June 2025, so this is worth confirming with CriteriaCaixa’s most recent disclosure before publication.
Inside two funds
The €300 million is allocated across two specialist, evergreen vehicles. Criteria Bio Ventures backs biotechnology and healthtech, with a portfolio that includes Minoryx Therapeutics, developing treatments for rare neurological diseases such as adrenoleukodystrophy, alongside Adaptam Therapeutics, Aboleris Pharma, NRG Therapeutics, Tolerance Bio and Cytospire.
Criteria Venture Tech targets deep tech, AI, cybersecurity, and software infrastructure, holding stakes in Ipronics, which builds programmable photonic chips for AI computing, as well as KD, Barbara, and Immfly.
Nearly 70% of the current portfolio’s value is held in Spanish companies, with Portugal, the wider Europe, and North America treated as selective rather than primary markets. Criteria Capital Risc typically takes board seats in its portfolio companies rather than investing passively, providing operational support alongside capital.
Where this fits inside CriteriaCaixa
Criteria Capital Risc sits inside CriteriaCaixa’s alternative investment portfolio, alongside Criteria PE Management, a newer unit investing in medium-sized unlisted companies through third-party funds, and InmoCaixa, which runs the group’s real estate business. Under CriteriaCaixa’s 2030 Strategic Plan, that entire alternative portfolio, spanning venture, private equity and real estate, is capped at 10% of the group’s total gross asset value.
That cap gives the number scale: €300 million is a small slice of a multibillion-euro balance sheet, but it is a meaningful one for Spain and Portugal’s science-led startups, which more often look outside the region for later-stage capital. Permanent, non-fund-cycle capital is relatively uncommon among the investors most active in European biotech and deeptech. Sofinnova Partners, for comparison, closed its latest healthcare-focused fund at €650 million in November 2025, a fixed-cycle vehicle with its own raise-and-deploy timeline, unlike Criteria Capital Risc’s open-ended structure.
Europe does not lack scientific talent. It lacks investors willing to fund that talent past the seed stage without pushing for a fast exit. Whether €300 million in patient capital is enough to keep more of that research, and the companies built on it, rooted in Spain and Portugal, is the real test of this rebrand.
