French VC firm Daphni is announcing the first closing of its new fund, Daphni Blue. The firm has raised '200 million (around $215 million at current exchange rates). It expects to raise as much as '250 million ($270 million) by the end of the year. With its latest fund, Daphni plans to invest in another 40 startups. Limited partners in Daphni Blue include Credit Mutuel Arkea, Bpifrance, the European Investment Fund, PRO BTP and Swen Capital Partners. 'We need to ask ourselves how we can both differentiate ourselves, and support technologies or services that are sustainable when we invest in new projects,' founding partner Pierre-Eric Leibovici told me. 'Because at the end of the day, there are cycles, and we can see that at a given moment, either the market consolidates, or it is dominated by American players, or in the end, there wasn't enough of a breakthrough to begin with.' While most VC firms mention artificial intelligence in every other sentence, Daphni wants to put an...
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