Polish-founded OTB Ventures will invest $185M in European deeptech thanks to NATO backing

OTB Ventures, one of the leading early-growth investor in Europe with Polish roots, has announced the closure of its Fund II, after the backing from the NATO Innovation Fund worth $185 million. The fresh fund will invest in European deeptech startups.

• Founded in 2017 by Polish Adam Niewinski, Gregory Jankilevitsch, and Marcin Hejka, OTB Ventures invests in early growth, post product, high-tech startups with unique technologies. OTB Ventures has offices in Warsaw and Amsterdam.
• With its first $138 million fund, launched in 2017, it invested in companies such as Polish-Finnish ICEYE, Poland’s Silent Eight, and Lithuania’s kevin. 
• The first close of its €150 million Fund II was in November 2023, and since then, OTB Ventures has already invested in nine companies including productivity and task mining platform KYP.ai, AI chip producer SEMRON, and space debris removal startup ClearSpace. 

About Fund II

Fund II will target four core sectors critical to Europe’s technological advancement:

• SpaceTech
• Enterprise Automation & AI
• Cybersecurity
• FinTech

Similarly to the Fund I, Fund II will primarily focus on Series A investments, providing growth capital to promising startups. However, up to 10% could be allocated to seed funding, and more than 50% to follow-on investments.

DeepTech is in our blood and has been our core strategy since we founded OTB in 2017. This milestone not only marks a significant achievement for our firm but also reaffirms our dedication to fostering innovation and entrepreneurship,

Marcin Hejka, co-founder and Managing Partner of OTB Ventures, commented.

• The Fund II is supported by a consortium of investors, including the European Investment Fund (EIF), Isomer Capital, CEE entrepreneurs, with LPs including Snowflake co-founder Marcin Zukowski, and OnDean, the family office of the Founders of Relativity.
• Now, it has also received support from the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF).

The partnership with NIF shows OTB’s commitment to supporting the development of “dual-use” disruptive technologies with both civilian and defense applications. In September 2023, NATO Innovation Fund closed its $1 billion flagship fund investing in deep tech, defense, security, and resilience startups with themes including energy, quantum computing, autonomy, climate, industries, space, and biotechnology.