Former head of Intel Capital to lead $150mn European cloud fund
Fri 26 Aug 2016
London-based fund manager C5 Capital is aiming to raise a $150 million (approx. £114 million) fund to tap into the growing cloud computing sector after appointing the former European head of Intel Capital, Marcos Battisti.
Battisti will join the firm this September to manage one of the largest funds of its kind in Europe. The investment will target next-stage development businesses operating in the cloud computing market, and hopes to enable further opportunities for remote processing and storage. The Financial Times expected typical investments to be between $5 million and $15 million.
At Intel’s venture capital group in the States, Battisti was involved in investments in companies such as French mobile connectivity company Sigfox, and Israeli semiconductor designer Anobit – which was bought by Apple in 2012.
The new cloud fund was inspired by a recent C5 partnership deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) in a Bahrain-based fund set up to support startups in the Middle East and Africa.
C5’s chief investment officer Daniel Freeman, told the FT that the cloud sector in the UK is still starting out despite a growing reliance on cloud infrastructure in the digital age.
He continued that the investment fund would be focused on supporting cloud infrastructure and platform providers, as well as consultancies. ‘It would have been a huge miss if we didn’t get involved in this market,’ he added.
C5 Capital, well versed in technology investment, launched Europe’s first cyber security fund in 2014. It has since invested in many infosec businesses, including a £16 million bet on Danish identity and access management firm Omada in May last year.
The cyber security fund has also pumped millions into Hungarian insider threat prevention company BalaBit, and medical equipment maker Metrasens.
Freeman argued that as cloud becomes ever more prevalent, the term ‘cloud’ will disappear as it becomes the ‘new normal’ for computing.
