Cloudberry

Cloudberry VC is an early-stage venture capital firm headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, with a second office in London, United Kingdom. It positions itself as Europe's first dedicated semiconductor venture capital fund and invests in companies advancing semiconductors, photonics and advanced materials to improve compute, connectivity, sensing and power. The firm operates a €30 million fund (Cloudberry Semiconductor VC Fund I), writing initial cheques of €400,000 to €1 million into pre-seed and seed companies, mainly in Europe.

The investment scope spans the semiconductor value chain across three declared focus areas: semiconductors (compute and control platforms for space, data centres, wearables and medical devices, with an emphasis on performance per watt); photonics (photonic and mixed electro-optic systems for high-bandwidth communications, imaging, diagnostics and instrumentation); and advanced materials, together with equipment, design tools and metrology used to move lab-scale innovation into repeatable production.

The partnership consists of founding partners René Kromhof (previously on the leadership team at optical sensor company Heptagon through its 2017 acquisition by ams AG, and earlier in engineering and product management at ASML) and Veera Pietikäinen (deep tech investing, portfolio support, legal and fund administration since 2019, and fractional CFO work), plus general partner and head of research Lawrence Lundy-Bryan, based in London. Venture partners are Tuomas Hollman, VP and Head of the Business Area Optics at Bosch Sensortec with prior senior roles at Texas Instruments and MaxLinear, and Lukas Steinmann, based in Zurich at Egon Zehnder and formerly SVP and Head of modules and solutions at ams Osram AG and VP and Head of Strategy at Heptagon.

Founding story

The firm was founded in 2025 by semiconductor industry operators who concluded that Europe's gap in commercialising semiconductor research was a shortage of specialist capital rather than talent or ideas. Founding partner René Kromhof, whose career spanned corporates including ASML as well as startups as an operator and investor, described a recurring mismatch between highly specialised technical founders and generalist "hard tech" investors lacking hands-on experience of semiconductor engineering, manufacturing constraints, equipment procurement and IP strategy; Cloudberry was set up to embed that expertise in the investment process.

Business model

Cloudberry operates as a venture capital fund manager, raising committed capital from limited partners and deploying it as minority equity investments in early-stage companies, with returns generated from exits. It supplements capital with sector-specific operational support and access to LP industrial infrastructure and technology roadmaps.

Fund management economics typical of venture capital, based on managing a €30 million vehicle and equity stakes in portfolio companies.

Traction

The debut fund reached an initial close of €30 million, matching its original target. Approximately 85% of the capital, excluding Finnish state investor Tesi, was raised internationally, from strategic corporates including GlobalFoundries and Radiant Opto-Electronics as well as institutional investors, angels and high-net-worth individuals. Reported plans call for backing roughly 20-30 startups over the coming years.

Latest developments

In May 2026 trade publication Silicon Semiconductor covered the launch of the fund and its €30 million initial close, with founding partner René Kromhof outlining the firm's specialist thesis and the international composition of its LP base. Private Equity International lists one fund in market, Cloudberry Semiconductor VC Fund I.