New €15M seed fund at KTH and Chalmers

A new €15 million seed fund was launched for spin-outs at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology and Chalmers University of Technology.

The fund will focus on information and communications technology, and materials and physics start-ups, said the manager, Jakob Svärdström, in a telephone interview. "We're looking at high-tech investments coming out of those environments" of Chalmers and KTH, he added.

About two-thirds of the capital comes from Sweden's Wallenberg Group and related  organisations, and about one third comes from Industrifonden, the Swedish industrial investment organisation. Chalmers and KTH contributed a small amount of capital, as well.

The fund's creation follows on from an earlier, €15 million seed fund created three years ago at KTH, and also managed by Svärdström. That fund is nearly committed, with room for just a few more investments, he said. The new fund, which broadened beyond KTH to include Chalmers, has a nine-year term. It will focus on seed-stage investments.