Germany’s Earlybird Venture Capital closes a new $200m fund as it expands into later stage deals

Earlybird Venture Capital has announced that it has closed its fourth fund, valued at €150 million ($200 million).

The Berlin and Munich-based firm is known for investing in early venture rounds and counts the likes of Carpooling.com, 6Wunderkinder, EyeEm and SocialBakers amongst its portfolio.

Earlybird partner Jason Whitmire tells us that the fund closed above target, helped by interest from some American institutional investors who have shied away from the European VC market since the early 2000s dotcom bubble days but are now more confident in Europe’s potential.

The new fund will see Earlybird broadening its options as to when it invests in startups, although it will stay away from seed-stage investments, where Whitmire says supply in Europe is already “robust,” and very late stage deals.

Witmire says although previous funds have taken in both Internet tech and medical startups, this one is all about the former, with a separate medical fund expected to close next year. There have already been ten investments from the fund announced today, the first of which was B2B payments startup Traxpay, last year.

Expect to see some investments of up to the €10 million ($13.2m) mark from this new fund, Earlybird’s fourth since it was founded in 1997.