Europe’s First and Largest Educational Technology Venture Capital [Brighteye] $54 Million Fund Rising

Luxembourg-based Brighteye Ventures, which claims to be Europe’s first and largest educational technology venture capital, has announced the first close of $54 million from its second fund, bringing managed assets to more than $112 million. The first close comes from a combination of new and existing investors, mainly international family offices, and a second closure is expected to include institutional investors in 2021.

With schools closed and in-person learning disrupted by the pandemic, the opportunity for educational technology to grow, and the pressure to make it work, is excellent. The market has changed since the VC has announced its first fund 3 years ago.
Managing partner Alex Spiro Latsis stated that while the firm has always “advocated for greater adoption of technology-enabled learning solutions, we barely imagined the size of the move that has led the closure of 90 per cent of global schools in Europe, the United States and beyond.”

The new fund will go to 15 or 20 companies over the next three years in the initial stages and Serie A, with sums of up to $5 million.
For it to happen, Brighteye says the team will proliferate, expanding from three members to ten over the next year. David Guerin has been promoted to Director to manage deal agreements and portfolio in Paris, and the company hopes to establish some kind of presence in the DACH region by the summer of 2022.

As for its current portfolio, Brighteye Ventures was one of the first investors in Ornikar, an online driving school serving more than 1.6 million students in France, which has just expanded to Spain. Tandem, the Berlin-based peer-to-peer language learning platform that recently grossed a Round of Serie A of $4.5 million; Zen Educate, a teacher delivery platform in the UK; and Epic!, a reading platform used in more than 90 per cent of American schools.