The Spanish manager Acurio Ventures has closed a €115 million fund, the first in Europe focused exclusively on the secondary market for venture capital funds. The vehicle has surpassed its initial target of €100 million and has 30% of institutional investors.
Acurio Ventures has announced the final closure of Acurio Secondaries I FCR, a €115 million fund that becomes the first vehicle in Europe specialised in purchasing stakes in other venture capital (VC) funds. The firm, which already manages over €450 million in assets, has exceeded its initial fundraising target of €100 million in a particularly challenging market environment for raising capital.
The new fund represents a bet on a still nascent segment in Europe: that of secondary transactions in the VC space. While secondary transactions are common in buyout or infrastructure private equity, there are hardly any funds in European venture capital dedicated to this strategy, which is dominated by large American managers.
A strategy to alleviate the liquidity shortage in venture capital
The venture capital market has been grappling with a liquidity problem for several years. Limited divestments over the last five years, with few IPOs and mergers, have generated pressure for both fund managers and investors who need to recover their capital. Secondary transactions have consolidated over the last decade as a complementary way to exit those stakes, and 2025 was a record year with over $200 billion in global transactions.
However, in the European venture capital segment, secondary activity is still very limited. Acurio Ventures aims to exploit that gap with a fund that focuses on transactions of less than €20 million, a range that large managers tend to overlook. The goal is to invest in early-stage VC funds that have been in existence for at least eight years, with mature portfolios and divestment plans of two to three years.
Ander Michelena, founding partner of Acurio Ventures, stated in a press release that “we continue to seek creative and differentiated strategies tailored to market circumstances.” The fund aims to generate a net multiple of at least twice the invested capital, with internal rates of return exceeding 25%.
Successful fundraising in an adverse environment
The closure of the fund has occurred just twelve months after the first closing, in June 2025. Despite the difficulties in raising capital in the venture capital sector —considered the most challenging environment since the early 2000s—, Acurio Secondaries I has managed to attract investors from both its previous vehicles and new participants. All of them are private.
The fund has achieved a diversified investor composition: approximately 30% of the capital comes from institutional investors, while international investors represent 25% of the total. This reinforces Acurio's strategy to expand its investor base beyond Spain.
With this new vehicle, the manager now has five funds under management: three for direct investment in startups and two dedicated to investing in other VC funds. The current portfolio of the secondary fund has already committed nearly €45 million, with a total value to paid-in capital (TVPI) of 1.75x, which avoids the typical J-curve of venture capital funds.
For investors interested in European venture capital, this fund offers a way to access already mature startup portfolios without having to wait for the long timelines of a primary fund. The secondary strategy allows for liquidity in a market where traditional exits remain scarce.
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