News

Despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the past year was a successful one for SmartCap, which invests in Estonian start-ups – through funds and direct investments, the investments of SmartCap Venture Capital Fund reached more than one hundred companies with a total turnover of nearly €850 million by the end of 2021.

SmartCap has selected Superangel as the deep tech fund manager, which will be raising additional private capital to the state’s 15 million anchor investment in order to invest in the development of deep tech companies.

SmartCap is organizing a public tender to find a lead to a science accelerator with the aim to stimulate innovation through a programme designed to guide participants and their ideas through developing protoypes and help commercialize an investable product in the fields of green technology and enhancement of natural resources.

Despite the increasingly devastating natural disasters and new crises that are shaking societies, we need to talk about the “green transition”, and talk loudly, writes SmartCap Fund Manager and Member of Board Sille Pettai.

According to a recent study conducted by EY among entrepreneurs and investors, GreenFund which was set up to accelerate the green transition, and which presently has 100 million euros available, should focus its investments primarily on hardware companies, whose solutions are more time-consuming and riskier compared to software.

Venture capital investors and VC funds estimate that the start-up companies with the greatest potential in the coming years are those which focus on green solutions, deep tech, decentralised finance and crypto, as well as improving health systems.

SmartCap is creating the 100-million-euro green technology oriented Green Fund using the funds of NextGenerationEU recovery plan, and is analysing the current state of the ecosystem of Estonian green technology companies, availability of capital, as well as market failures.

SmartCap and the University of Tartu signed an agreement to create a science accelerator in the field of health technologies to support establishment and development of deep tech startups.

SmartCap began preparations for the establishment of a new public investment fund, the GreenFund, which aims to invest in businesses that create green technologies in order to solve environmental issues and achieve a climate-neutral and circular economy. The new investment fund, which also contributes to the development of the Estonian capital market and thus more broadly the local business environment, is a part of the European recovery plan.

SmartCap has launched a procurement to find the professional service providers for developing the deep tech ecosystem in Estonia.

SmartCap is proceeding to the negotiation phase in the Deep Tech Fund call with the preferred applicant.

SmartCap uses public procurement to find the partners for executing the sub-activities that are focused on high-tech entrepreneurship ecosystem development and provision of the services.