Nauta Capital, a venture capital firm with offices in London and Barcelona, Spain, has closed the first €60M of its sixth fund. The British Business Bank, the British government’s economic development bank, came in as the anchor investor, the fourth time it has put money into Nauta.
Nauta is aiming for a total of €150M to €200M, with a final close planned for the second half of 2027. If it gets there, the firm says, the assets it manages would come close to €750M. Fund VI will back European business-to-business (B2B) software and deep tech startups from pre-seed to Series A.
Alongside the bank, the first close drew SETT, a Spanish state company that invests in technology funds, the Belgian investment firm Merifin Capital and the Institut Català de Finances, the Catalan government’s public finance body. Institutions and family offices from the United Kingdom (UK), continental Europe, Latin America and the Middle East joined too. Nauta says three-quarters of the backers in this close have invested with it before.
“Having invested through every major technology shift since the early 2000s, we’ve learned that enduring venture firms are built on discipline, adaptability and long-term conviction,” said Carles Ferrer Roqueta, Nauta’s London-based general partner. He added that the philosophy had carried the firm to “the rare milestone of a sixth fund”.
A Fourth Cheque From The UK Bank
The bank first backed Nauta in 2015, when its VC Catalyst Fund invested in Nauta’s fourth fund, which had just held a $70M first close. British Patient Capital, the bank’s commercial arm for venture investing, followed in 2019 with a commitment to a €55M sidecar fund that Nauta set up to back its later-stage portfolio companies.
In 2021 British Patient Capital put €25M into the fifth fund as its anchor investor. Nauta’s announcement does not say how much the bank has committed to Fund VI.
“Since our first commitment, Nauta has built a substantial presence in London and established the UK as a core investment market for them,” said Michael Laycock, investment director for funds at the British Business Bank. He said the partnership shows the role the bank “can play in attracting international investors to the UK”.
Nauta is not the only firm with a London base that the bank has backed this year. In July it committed €65M to Highland Europe’s Technology Growth Fund VI, a growth fund of more than €1B that typically backs companies from Series B up to just before a stock market listing. Nauta works at the other end, with startups from pre-seed to Series A.
Software First, Deep Tech Alongside
Nauta says it invests mainly in capital-efficient software companies, meaning ones that can grow without burning through large sums, that are shaking up travel, finance, retail and human resources. Its website lists first cheques of €250K to €4M and says it backs B2B software firms with a working product, even before they make revenue.
The same fund also houses Nauta Labs, which backs deep tech companies at pre-seed. Its areas include high-performance computing, artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, cybersecurity, industrial automation, digital health infrastructure and frontier energy technology.
On the software side, Nauta points to NetBird, a Berlin, Germany, company that makes open-source cybersecurity software. Nauta backed it at pre-seed, and it has since raised a $10M Series A. The portfolio also includes Lodgify, which makes software for holiday rental owners, Unravel, which uses AI to help travellers find and book trips, and Acai Travel, which builds AI agents for travel customer support.
The Track Record Behind The Raise
Nauta launched its first institutional fund, worth €50M, in 2006. It says it has since backed over 200 founders at more than 100 companies and counts more than 25 exits with a combined value of almost €3B. Among them are Brandwatch, the UK social media monitoring company, and Holded, a Barcelona maker of business management software.
Its website lists other sales too, including the media software firm Zephr to Zuora, the sales app ForceManager to Sage and the product management tool airfocus to Lucid Software. Across Europe, though, more startups have lately been selling for less than a year’s revenue.
In October, Universal Quantum, a University of Sussex spinout that says it is building the world’s first million-qubit quantum computer, raised more than $100M in a Series A. Firgun Ventures and DCVC co-led the round, and Nauta was among the existing backers. The university calls it the largest Series A raised by a UK quantum firm.
A Smaller Start Than Fund V
Nauta’s fifth fund, Nauta Tech Invest V, held a €120M first close in 2020 and finished at €190M in 2021, above its €150M target. That made it the firm’s largest fund. Its fourth fund ended at €155M.
At €60M, the new first close is half the size of Fund V’s. The target range of €150M to €200M sits around the fifth fund’s final total, so Nauta is setting out to raise roughly what it did last time, starting from a smaller opening sum.
Two general partners lead the firm, Ferrer in London and Jordi Viñas in Barcelona. Partners Borja Breña and Anna Daviau, both in Barcelona, and associate partner Conor Scanlan in London sit alongside them on the team.
Fundraising Picks Up For Some
European venture firms raised €3.5B in the first quarter of 2026, PitchBook data shows, putting the year on course for 11.1% growth. That would be the first rise since 2022, after commitments in 2025 fell to their weakest level in a decade.
In the same quarter, though, 35.3% of the funds that closed were smaller than the ones before them, the highest share in ten years. Experienced managers were on track to close more funds than in 2025, while newer firms were pacing 18.6% below last year’s total.
The British Business Bank’s own research, published in September, found that UK venture funds started between 2002 and 2021 were worth 1.78 times the money investors paid in, counting cash returned and holdings still owned, level with US funds. Michael Moore, chief executive of the industry body UK Private Capital, said UK pension funds were missing out by putting too little into venture.
Where Nauta’s Sixth Fund Stands
Nauta now has €60M committed to Fund VI, with the British Business Bank as anchor for a fourth time and most of the first-close backers coming back from earlier funds. It is aiming for €150M to €200M by the second half of 2027, close to the size of its last fund. The money is set for early rounds in European business software, with Nauta Labs backing pre-seed deep tech from the same fund.
