Act Venture Capital to target 35 startups with first close of new investment fund

The company, which has now raised over €600m in total, says that it plans the final closing of the fund later this year. The company says 80pc of the fund is already committed.

Act VC, led by John Flynn, Debbie Rennick and John O’Sullivan, targets early-stage investments up to €10m and is focused on areas such as artificial intelligence, enterprise, health, deep tech and energy.

The new fund will place investments into 35 companies that mostly span these areas.

It will come as a fillip to startups worried about a possible falling off in investor interest due to the sharp decline in public and private tech stocks in recent weeks.

Act VC recently led a €15m Series A round into Fran Quilty’s e-commerce data analytics firm Conjura.

It has also partnered with Enterprise Ireland to establish a ‘Seed Sidecar Fund’ which has completed four seed deals into Plasmabound, Trustap, Clearword and Inferex.

The company’s investor base includes the European Investment Fund, the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, Enterprise Ireland and AIB. It also includes a number of private family office funds. The firm says that the majority of its latest commitments come from investors in previous funds, “showing their confidence in the team and the strategy”.

The company’s current portfolio includes Ekco, Gridbeyond, Cubic Telecom, Deciphex and Provizio. In the last five years, it has had 20 exits, including: SilverCloud Health, acquired by Amwell; Decawave, acquired by Qorvo; Corvil, acquired by Pico; and Ocrex, acquired by Sage.

“The Irish market has doubled in size in the past four years,” said Act VC managing partner John Flynn.

“A feature of our maturing market has been the recycling of capital and talent from the increasing number of successful exits. We are seeing very strong network effects from repeat entrepreneurs. This will see Ireland build larger and more impactful companies.”