Fly Ventures, a venture capital firm based in Berlin, which assists seed-stage European startups in the domain of enterprise and deep technology, has initiated its third fund with €80 million. The company had previously amassed a €53 million fund in 2020.

Focused on technical entrepreneurs, the firm asserts that Fund III was in high demand and achieved with just one closing. Meanwhile, the moderate increment in fund volume denotes the firm’s intent to function as a boutique entity.

Established by Gabriel Matuschka and Fredrik Bergenlid, Fly Ventures allocates between €1 million and €4 million in financing rounds ranging from €2 million to €10 million at the early stage.

Matuschka mentioned to TechCrunch: “We enjoy pursuing initiatives that initially, others ponder, what the … material science and AI?! These days, more people engage in it, but our approach is to make these types of investments two to three years prior to when others show interest.”

With Matt Wichrowski, Marie Brayer, Bergenlid, and Matuschka, the firm employs a model with four equal partners, each located in Berlin, London, Paris, and Zurich.

“I believe the Berlin/London combination is also supplemented by Munich, because from Berlin you can incorporate Munich. And for more technical matters, Munich tends to have more strength. But it was evident you needed to address Germany and the UK. Over the past four years or so, Paris, on the technical front, has also really accelerated, which is why we also brought on Marie, who is based in Paris,” Matuschka stated.

Previously, Bergenlid worked with Google on Google Assistant, and Matuschka was the founder of the travel shopping club TripHunter (acquired by brands4friends, now under eBay’s ownership).

Artificial Intelligence has so far constituted approximately 45% of Fly’s investments, with vertical applications and industrial technology making up 35%, and development tools/infrastructure comprising 20%.

Included in its portfolio are a clinical trials marketplace Inato, anti-money-laundering startup Salv, and the cybersecurity company GitGuardian.

Additionally, Wayve has recently raised $1.05 billion in a Series C round headed by SoftBank to advance autonomous driving with self-learning technology.

It has also invested in Lakera, a Zurich-based venture aiming to protect companies from LLM vulnerabilities, and Orbital Materials, a U.K.-headquartered enterprise creating foundation models for materials science.