New €100 Million Fund Considering Blockchain Startups

Finnish investment firm Open Ocean Capital has suggested it may consider European blockchain firms as recipients for funding raised as part of its recently closed €100 million fund.

An investor in startups including photo editing app EyeEm and phone number search tool Truecaller, Open Ocean is primarily focused on opportunities involving early-stage startups raising Series A and Series B rounds.

As part of its funding announcement, Open Ocean revealed Orchestream and Tideway Systems founder Richard Muirheadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Muirhead would join as a partner.

Notably, Muirhead voiced his enthusiasm for the blockchain, the underlying distributed ledger on which the digital currency bitcoin is based, stating:

”I couldn’t be more excited at its prospects for technology-fuelled and entrepreneur-led growth in the next. Forty billion-dollar tech successes in Europe since year 2000 have brought well-deserved confidence, fuelling further world-class innovation in sectors such as security, data science, blockchain and cloud infrastructure and automation.”

A blog post on the announcement suggests the fund will focus on enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS), cloud infrastructure, big data, machine learning and mobile solutions. Blockchain technology was not mentioned specifically, though a subsequent TechCrunch article cited FinTech among its areas of focus.

European Investment Fund, Finnish Industry Investment and other undisclosed institutional and private investors participated in the round.

Open Ocean did respond to requests for further comment.

Investment image via Shutterstock