- Fin, the AI customer service platform formerly known as Intercom, was acquired by Salesforce for about $3.6 billion on June 15. This deal highlights one of the biggest shifts in European tech: the move from traditional SaaS to AI.
- Tapestry VC, which invested early in Fin, is using this exit to launch its third fund at $80 million, almost three times as large as its last. The fund is supported by British Business Bank, Railpen, Molten Ventures, and Sarah Friar, OpenAI’s chief financial officer.
- With Fund III, Tapestry will make bigger investments, ranging from $1 million to $4 million, up from the previous $500,000 to $1 million. The firm also plans to take on more lead and co-lead roles.
Intercom spent 15 years as one of Europe’s best-known customer messaging tools before co-founders Eoghan McCabe and Des Traynor staked the company’s future on AI and renamed it Fin, building an agent designed to resolve customer queries end to end. Earlier this month, that wager paid off: Salesforce agreed to acquire Fin for approximately $3.6 billion, one of the largest AI customer-service deals to date.
The deal lands at a moment when the market for AI customer-service agents is one of the most contested in enterprise tech: Sierra, founded by former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, has raised at a $15.8 billion valuation, while London-based Gradient Labs and Germany’s Parloa have raised fresh rounds this year chasing the same shift away from human-staffed support desks.
Tapestry VC, the seed investor behind Fin since Intercom’s 2023 relaunch, was already raising its next fund when the deal closed, but the timing has handed the firm its clearest validation yet.
“It’s probably one of the best case studies of a repeat founder stewarding a business that was traditionally a regular SaaS business into the AI era,” Audrey Miller, a partner at Tapestry, tells Tech Funding News.
Did it affect our timing around the third fund? No, we’ve been working on the third fund since before the acquisition. But it’s great timing to have a lot of good news come out of the portfolio just around the third fund launch,” she says.
$80M to back it happening again
Tapestry, co-founded by Patrick Murphy and David Kelly in 2018, supports founders who have already built and sold companies and are starting new ones. The firm is based in London but has roots in San Francisco.
Today, it launched its $80 million Fund III, with British Business Bank as a major backer, along with returning investors such as Railpen, the £35 billion rail industry pension fund, and Molten Ventures, a £1 billion London-listed fund-of-funds. OpenAI’s CFO, Sarah Friar, is also backing the fund.
Miller says, “Sarah has been a supporter and friend of the fund since the early days,” and notes that Friar is part of a larger group of executives supporting Tapestry in Europe, the UK, and the US.
Tapestry did not share how much British Business Bank invested, but such commitments are usually cornerstone investments in early-stage UK funds. When asked why the firm chose Tapestry, Miller pointed to the firm’s strong record in London, including its early investment in Nothing, now worth $1.3 billion, and portfolio companies Tracebit and Maze.
She says, “Having the support of the British Business Bank is a testament to the great work we’ve been doing in the UK ecosystem.”
Fund III is not just bigger. It also marks a change in how Tapestry invests. The firm will put in $1 million to $4 million per company and take on more lead and co-lead roles, up from the previous $500,000 to $1 million. Miller, however, did not share how many companies the new fund will back.
Betting on Europe’s repeat-founder boom
The fund’s growth is part of a bigger trend in Europe, where more founders are starting new companies after previous successes.
Dealroom data shared by Tapestry shows that startups led by second- and third-time European founders have created $2.2 trillion in value and employ over two million people at 23,000 companies.
Since 2018, Europe has seen 477 unicorns, with 60% started by repeat entrepreneurs, according to Miller. “Founder ambition in this country has never been higher. We’re seeing a super cycle of repeat founders,” she says.
Other funds are following the same investment strategy and have support from the same backer. British Business Bank has also made cornerstone investments in Episode 1’s latest fund and Antler’s UK-focused fund earlier in 2026.
The state-owned bank is focused on seed-stage, founder-led investing with several managers. This raises an important question for Tapestry: what keeps larger funds from pursuing the same repeat-founder opportunities in Europe?
Tapestry’s portfolio covers many areas, including consumer electronics, fitness, robotics, drone delivery, software, and AI. Miller says, “It’s truly sector agnostic,” and points to investments in Nothing, the fitness app Ladder, Sunrise Robotics, and drone delivery startup Manna Air as examples of how the firm focuses on founders, not sectors.
She adds, “It’s not so much about sectors as it is about backing ambitious founders on their next journey.”
A track record built on one big exit, and two smaller ones
Miller says that every company Tapestry backed in its second fund has raised more money in follow-on rounds, giving the firm a 100% graduation rate, which she says is much higher than the market average. The firm did not say how many companies this includes.
Tapestry also points to two exits led by female founders: Break Room, started by Anna Maybank and bought by ZipRecruiter, and Sustain.Life, started by repeat founder Annalee Bloomfield and bought by Workiva. Miller says, “We live and breathe diversity within the fund,” noting that one of the firm’s three partners is a woman.
The firm’s co-founder, Murphy, is moving from San Francisco to lead Tapestry’s new London office, which Miller says fits with the firm’s investment approach. She explains, “We like to think about our location personally and as a fund, like we encourage our founders to think about theirs.” Murphy, who is both Irish and American, has spent more than ten years splitting his time between the US and Europe. Miller, who was born in the US to a family from Uruguay, has also moved to London after several years in San Francisco.
Fin’s journey from a 15-year-old messaging tool to a $3.6 billion AI acquisition is a rare example of a successful transformation in enterprise software. Tapestry’s investment in McCabe and Traynor’s second company is now its best case for attracting new investors.
The big question for Fund III is whether $80 million will be enough to find the next Fin before competitors like Sierra, Parloa, and other well-funded AI firms do.
