Early-stage Franco-German VC XAnge raises €220m

Berlin and Paris-based VC firm XAnge has raised a €220m fund — double the size of its last fund — to invest in early-stage digital, deeptech and impact startups.

Where will XAnge’s money be spent?

• XAnge will make 10 investments this year from the new fund. 
• Its average ticket size is €300k to €10m and it plans to save 50% of the fund for follow-ons.
• Sectors it is particularly excited about right now include: digital health, decentralised finance, Web3, developer tools, bio sourcing and bio production.
• XAnge has already made 15 investments from its new fund. Most recently, it participated in HR platform WorkMotion’s Series B round and led the seed round of Pina Earth, a startup digitising the certification of forest carbon projects.

What is XAnge’s track record?

• XAnge was founded in Paris in 2004 as the so-called innovation brand of the Siparex group, a French private equity group. 
• In 2021 alone, XAnge invested €80m in seed to Series A rounds.
• XAnge counts six unicorns among its portfolio including speedy grocery startup Flink, open banking platform Deposit Solutions and Ledger, a hardware wallet for crypto assets.
• It has also supported two IPOs: Believe, a platform helping music artists develop their audiences globally, and glasses ecommerce brand Mister Spex.
• As of March 31, its second fund had generated a return of 4.81x, and its third fund a return of 1.87x.

Future plans

• XAnge currently operates in France, Germany, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland, though it plans to increase its presence in Germany. It has recently opened an office in Berlin — its second in Germany alongside its office in Munich — and has an office in Paris too. 
• It recently hired two female investors — Fadwa Ouardani and Astrid Moullé-Berteaux — and plans to hire one or two more investors by the end of the year. 
• It aims to make 30% of all its investments in Germany.
• XAnge is launching a dedicated Web3 fund called the Digital Ownership Fund, which is targeting a raise of €80m. Berlin-based Cherry Ventures also has a dedicated Web3 fund. And global VC firm Cathay Innovation and French fintech unicorn Ledger recently teamed up to launch an early-stage Web3 fund.
• It also has the ambition to raise a pre-seed fund eventually, says managing partner Guillaume Meulle, as this is where it sees some of the most “exciting growth opportunities”.

Sifted’s take

XAnge isn’t the only French investor to make a big play for Germany; Paris-based Revaia raised a €250m growth fund last year and also opened an office in Berlin. The firm sees a big opportunity in Germany since it’s the biggest ecosystem in Europe other than Britain and is “rapidly developing when it comes to invested capital,” XAnge analyst Astrid Moullé-Berteaux recently told Sifted.

Miriam Partington is Sifted’s DACH correspondent. She also covers future of work, coauthors Sifted’s Startup Life newsletter and tweets from @mparts_