Balderton Capital raises $305 million to invest in European tech

Balderton Capital, the European VC investor behind MySQL, NaturalMotion and Yoox, has raised $305 million for its fifth European fund. As has been hinted at previously, the focus of the new fund will be on Series A investments in European tech startups. Other investments in other regions such as the US or Russia will be scaled back to focus exclusively on Europe. The total value of the companies backed by Balderton is worth over $10 billion.

London VC firm Balderton Capital, a 14-year-old investor group with exits to Amazon, Sun Microsystems, and Zynga, today raised $305 million for its fifth fund. Originally branded as Benchmark Capital Europe until it split from Benchmark Captial in 2007, Balderton Capital will continue to focus on early-stage European tech startups. The firm’s past portfolio hits include Lovefilm (sold to Amazon), MySQL (sold to Sun Microsystems), and NaturalMotion (sold to Zynga). In total, Balderton has raised $2.2 billion.