Private equity firm Acurio Ventures has announced the final close of Acurio Secondaries I FCR, a pioneering €115 million fund that invests exclusively in secondary transactions involving European venture capital (VC) funds.
Acurio Secondaries introduces a differentiated strategy to the European market and marks another step forward in Acurio's ambition to become one of Europe's leading venture capital managers.
Ander Michelena, Founding Partner at Acurio Ventures, said: “We continue to pursue creative and differentiated strategies tailored to current market conditions, with the aim of generating value for our investors while establishing ourselves as a leading venture capital firm in Europe.”
With the launch of this new vehicle, Acurio Ventures' assets under management exceed €450 million, spread across five investment vehicles focused on technology in Europe: three dedicated to direct investments in startups and two investing in venture capital funds.
A strategy designed for today's venture capital market
The private equity market—and venture capital in particular—is facing an environment characterized by constrained liquidity, a challenge that Acurio Ventures aims to address through its new fund.
Despite early signs of improvement in the exit market during the second half of 2025, private equity, and especially venture capital, continues to face significant headwinds as a result of the limited number of realizations over the past five years. This has intensified liquidity pressures for both fund managers and investors, particularly in a market that, following the excesses of 2021 and 2022, places much greater emphasis on managers' ability to return capital to investors.
Against this backdrop, secondary transactions have emerged over the past decade as an increasingly important complementary exit mechanism alongside traditional IPOs and mergers and acquisitions (M&A). In fact, 2025 was the largest year on record for the secondary market, with more than $200 billion in global transaction volume.
However, unlike other areas of private equity, such as buyouts and the middle market, the venture capital secondaries market—particularly in Europe—remains at a very early stage of development and is largely dominated by large U.S. asset managers overseeing billions of dollars in assets.
Acurio's new vehicle is designed to capitalize on this emerging opportunity by focusing exclusively on European venture capital funds and targeting an underserved segment of the market: transactions below €20 million.
The fund offers a range of liquidity solutions tailored specifically to the venture capital ecosystem, serving both fund managers and fund investors. To execute this strategy, Acurio Ventures leverages its established relationships with a large proportion of Europe's VC managers and its reputation as a trusted partner, built through investments in approximately 120 startups and around 20 venture capital funds to date.
The fund is expected to be fully invested within 18 to 24 months, focusing on mature early-stage venture capital funds with at least eight years of operating history, well-defined portfolios with clearly identified value drivers, and realistic exit plans over the next two to three years. The target is to deliver a net multiple of at least 2x invested capital and an internal rate of return (IRR) above 25%.
The vehicle has already assembled a meaningful portfolio, with approximately €45 million committed to investments. Thanks to attractive discounts negotiated with sellers and the strong performance of the underlying assets, the fund's Total Value to Paid-In Capital (TVPI) currently stands at 1.75x, effectively avoiding the J-curve despite the portfolio still being in its early stages of construction.
Successful fundraising in a challenging market
Just twelve months after its initial close at the end of June 2025, the fund has reached €115 million in commitments, exceeding its original €100 million fundraising target. The investor base includes both existing investors from previous Acurio vehicles and new private investors.
At a time widely regarded as the most challenging fundraising environment for venture capital since the beginning of the century, securing these commitments represents a significant achievement.
The new fund also reinforces Acurio's strategy of expanding and internationalizing its investor base. Nearly 30% of the capital has been committed by institutional investors, while international investors account for approximately one quarter of the fund.
As was the case with Acurio III—the firm's €150 million direct investment fund closed in 2024—the new vehicle includes one of the largest and most prestigious U.S.-based university endowments as its anchor investor. The institution has extensive experience investing with many of the world's leading private capital managers. In addition, more than 35 family offices and high-net-worth families from across Spain, together with technology entrepreneurs, pension funds and other investors, have committed capital to the fund.
The management team's own commitment exceeds €15 million, continuing Acurio Ventures' longstanding practice of aligning managers' interests with those of investors through a commitment several times higher than is customary in the private equity industry.
“We are extremely grateful for the trust placed in us by both our new and returning investors. Successfully launching a fund of this nature in what is currently one of the most difficult fundraising environments for venture capital—and doing so with a 100% private investor base that includes prestigious international and institutional investors—is a major milestone and a strong validation of the strategy we have been pursuing,” said Diego Recondo, Partner at Acurio Ventures.
Synergies across investment strategies
Alongside its venture capital fund investment strategy, Acurio Ventures manages three additional vehicles dedicated to direct investments in European seed and Series A startups. The latest of these, Acurio Ventures III, closed in 2024 with more than €150 million in commitments and remains in its investment period, currently holding a portfolio of more than 40 companies.
Through its direct investment strategy, Acurio Ventures has invested in approximately 120 European companies, reflecting the firm's international focus since its inception. Its portfolio includes established technology companies such as Seedtag, Voy, Preply, Jobandtalent, Indexa Capital, Lingokids and Refurbed.
Acurio Ventures believes that continuing to develop its two complementary investment strategies—direct startup investments and venture capital fund investments—will further strengthen relationships with fund managers, investors, entrepreneurs and the broader venture capital ecosystem, both in Spain and internationally.
The firm has a team of 17 professionals based in Bilbao, Madrid, Barcelona and London, led by Ander Michelena, Kate Cornell, Diego Recondo and Hugo Fernández-Mardomingo.
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The vehicle, which exceeded its initial €100 million target, was fun...
