Europe invests billions into early-stage climate startups, only to watch too many fail at Series B, according to a recent report. But new funds are being raised to fill this gap, and Spain-based Mundi Ventures’ latest fund, Kembara Fund I, is one of them.
After securing a €350 million commitment from the European Investment Fund under the European Tech Champions Initiative in 2024, Mundi Ventures has just completed a €750 million first close for Kembara, its fifth fund and largest to date.
Regulatory filing from Spain reveals that the fund — focused on deep tech — could even stretch its final closing to €1.25 billion. But according to Kembara co-founder and general partner Yann de Vries, getting to €750 million in two years as a first fund in this environment “was not easy.”
Kembara is managed by a specialist team within Mundi Ventures, with offices in Madrid, London, Barcelona, and Paris. Mundi Ventures founder Javier Santiso is now also a co-founder and GP of the Kembara fund, which has now disclosed the full list of its senior partners.
Alongside de Vries and Santiso, climate tech VC Robert Trezona and deep tech VC Pierre Festal have also joined as general partners, as well as former Atomico partner Siraj Khaliq as senior strategic advisor.
Their individual track records helped them raise funds from institutional backers waking up to the need for European growth capital that can turn its many university spinouts into sizable businesses with industrial synergies. But it also gave them a front-row seat into the broader growing pains of European climate and deep tech startups — especially de Vries.
A seasoned venture capitalist who founded Redpoint eVentures Brazil and later became a partner at Atomico, de Vries had moved to the other side of the table to join German electric aircraft startup Lilium — only for the company to cease operations in 2024 after raising more than $1 billion and going public via a SPAC.
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In de Vries’ view, Lilium went bankrupt because it couldn’t find the growth capital it needed, but this “traumatizing experience” also had a silver lining. “I saw so many amazing teams in Europe that were going through the same journey,” he said. …