Nauta Capital has raised a €60 million first close for its sixth fund, with the UK's British Business Bank putting in half of it. The London and Barcelona venture firm plans to grow the fund to between €150 million and €200 million by a final close in the second half of 2027.
The first close was announced on 15 October 2026. At its target size, the new fund would take Nauta's total assets under management to close to €750 million.
Who put the money in
The anchor is the British Business Bank, the UK government-owned development bank, which committed €30 million, half the first close. It is the fourth Nauta fund in a row it has backed.
The rest came from a familiar group. The European Investment Fund, Germany's KfW Capital, Spain's SETT, Merifin Capital and the Catalan government's Institut Català de Finances all took part, alongside institutions and family offices across the UK, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.
About three-quarters of the investors in this first close had backed Nauta before. For a fund, that repeat rate is the clearest sign that the previous bets paid off.
What Nauta backs
Nauta is an early-stage investor, writing first cheques of roughly €250,000 to €4 million from pre-seed to Series A. Its focus is capital-efficient business software, in areas like travel, finance, retail and HR, alongside deep tech.
The deep-tech side runs through its Nauta Labs initiative, started in 2021, which puts small pre-seed cheques into high-performance computing, AI infrastructure, cybersecurity, industrial automation, digital health and energy.
Recent bets show the range. Nauta backs the quantum computing firm Universal Quantum, the Berlin open-source cybersecurity startup NetBird, the AI travel companies Unravel and Acai Travel, and the rental-management platform Lodgify.
A long track record
Founded in 2004, Nauta is one of Europe's oldest early-stage venture firms. It describes a team of 20 that has managed more than €600 million over two decades.
Across that time it has backed over 200 founders at around 100 companies, and reports nearly €3 billion in exit value from more than 25 exits. The best known are the social-analytics firm Brandwatch, the Spanish accounting platform Holded and the connectivity-data company Connectbase.
The fund maths has grown steadily. Fund IV closed at €155 million in 2015, Fund V closed at €190 million in 2021, €40 million above target, and Fund VI is aiming higher still.
Why it matters
This is a fund close, not a startup round, but it feeds the same pipeline. A fresh €60 million now, heading towards €200 million, is new money that will land in dozens of European and UK software and deep-tech companies over the next few years.
The British Business Bank's €30 million is the part worth watching for British founders. The state-owned bank keeps anchoring the funds that early-stage startups draw from, a quieter form of the same push that has kept the UK near the top of global tech funding.
Carles Ferrer Roqueta, a general partner at Nauta, framed the raise around staying power. Enduring venture firms, he said, are built on "discipline, adaptability and long-term conviction."
Michael Laycock, investment director for funds at the British Business Bank, pointed to the firm's growing London base as the reason the bank keeps coming back. For founders, the takeaway is simpler. There is more early-stage capital on the way, and a good deal of it has a British anchor.
