Swedish venture capital firm BackingMinds has raised €50 million in the first close of its third fund, BackingMinds Invest III, to back the founders taking on Europe’s biggest challenges. The European Investment Fund is an anchor investor with €20 million, committed under the InvestEU programme, alongside an unusually broad base of established private investors and unicorn founders who have built and scaled some of Europe’s most successful companies themselves. The fund will back around 20 early-stage companies, with at least 90 percent invested in the Nordics and up to 10 percent in the rest of Europe, and remains open to selected new investors ahead of an expected final close in the first quarter of 2027.
For the Øresund region, the fund is more than a Stockholm story. The Øresund region is a key market for BackingMinds, with around 20 percent of its dealflow coming from the country, and the firm has already backed several Øresund startups, including Uniqkey, NitroVolt, and Hybird Energy and Mylla in the region.
“The Øresund region is one of the Nordics’ most exciting entrepreneurial regions, with strong research and many driven founders. We believe that tomorrow’s most successful companies are not necessarily found where venture capital traditionally looks. Talent is everywhere, but capital is not. With our third fund, we want to reach even more entrepreneurs outside the established networks, not least in the Øresund region,”
said Susanne Najafi, Founding Partner of BackingMinds.
Europe faces a defining moment, with technological sovereignty, energy security, and industrial competitiveness as strategic priorities. BackingMinds believes many of the solutions Europe needs are already being built by founders across the Nordics. But finding the companies that will lead these industries requires a different approach to venture capital. Most funds still find companies the way the industry did in the seventies: through warm introductions, the same schools, and the same cities.
“The biggest challenges of our time need new solutions. But great minds think alike. That’s the problem. Venture capital still finds its companies through networks, and networks filter out what they don’t recognise. Europe needs unfiltered and pattern-breaking ideas. We have built our own way to find them,”
said Sara Wimmercranz, Founding Partner of BackingMinds.
Founded in 2016 by Sara Wimmercranz and Susanne Najafi as Europe’s first female-founded venture capital firm, BackingMinds set out to change that. Over the past decade, the firm has built a model combining a broad audience with data-driven sourcing, identifying opportunities at a scale that personal networks alone cannot match. Before BackingMinds, the two founders built some of the Nordics’ largest e-commerce companies, and they bring that operator experience to every company they back.
“Talent is everywhere, but capital still isn’t. That gap is an opportunity, and investors from the EIF to some of Europe’s most successful tech entrepreneurs see it too. Our first close is already larger than our entire previous fund, and it lets us back more of the founders building the answers Europe needs,”
said Susanne Najafi.
The fund invests in Climate & Resilience, AI & Digital Sovereignty, and Human Potential, with initial tickets of €1 to €3 million and reserves for follow-on investments.
