Amadeus Capital Partners, the European technology investor, today announced the close of Amadeus III, above target, at over $310m (£160m). This is one of the largest European venture funds raised in the last five years which, added to the Amadeus & Angels Seed fund of $19m (£10m), raised at the end of 2006, provides Amadeus with more than $330m for investment in European technology businesses. 

Amadeus III will, like its predecessor funds, back entrepreneurs and teams developing ‘disruptive’ technologies that either offer new ways of fulfilling existing functions or enable completely new functions in fabless semiconductors, wireless technologies, med-tech, digital media, software and services. Amadeus, based in London and Cambridge, backs companies from seed stage through to later stage expansion and nurtures them through several rounds of finance, bringing in other venture capitalists with relevant expertise or geographic presence for each company’s development. 

Amadeus maintains strong networks in universities and technology clusters across Europe, and has spun out a number of companies from university research laboratories. The investment team of 16, comprising ten nationalities, is led by Anne Glover and Hermann Hauser and has produced exceptional successes since its first fund, with trade sales including Element 14, Entropic, and End2End and IPOs including CSR, Optos, lastminute.com, and SPI Lasers.

Some of Amadeus’ companies that have broken new ground include CSR the world leader in bluetooth chip technology, in which Amadeus was a founding investor; Plastic Logic which leads the world in the field of plastic electronics, which Amadeus seed financed and which recently raised $100m to build its first facility; Optos, which is revolutionising eyecare with a new way of imaging the retina; Solexa, which recently merged with Illumina in a $600m transaction creating the world’s leading genetic analysis business, and PacketFront which has developed innovative systems to manage end-to-end delivery of multiple broadband services. 

Philippe Poggiolli of Access Capital Partners said “What we like about Amadeus is their ability to create significant winners, plus the fact that they build value in portfolio companies over several years – often from seed financing – to achieve a better multiple at exit. We are delighted to continue our support of the team in this their third fund.” 

Commenting on the successful raising of Amadeus III, CEO Anne Glover said: “European technology entrepreneurs are fantastically creative in devising and developing technologies and businesses that change our lives and the way in which we do things. Technology is now completely global so it doesn’t matter where a company is founded, based or financed as long as it thinks globally. Companies like CSR and Skype are proof of that. Our deal flow is strong and of high quality and we look forward to investing Amadeus III and our seed fund over the next few years.” 

Amadeus III investors, over 70% of whom are based outside the UK, include Access Capital Partners, Adams Street Partners, Alpinvest Partners NV, Bank of Scotland, Capital Dynamics, European Investment Fund, Parish Capital Advisors Europe, Pantheon Ventures and Partners Group. Legal advisers were SJ Berwin and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Project management was provided by Vicky Mudford Limited.