Israel’s Viola Ventures hits $250M for its new fund, appoints Yael Alroy as partner – TechCrunch

Viola Ventures, an Israeli VC, has closed its sixth fund of $250M. It now has $1.25B in assets under management, largely early-stage tech companies. Viola says the fund was oversubscribed and reached its hard cap.

With the new fund, Viola Ventures will invest in 25-30 early-stage (seed and A-round) companies, in its core verticals such as fintech, vertical AI and deep tech, digital health, next-gen enterprise infrastructure, SaaS 3.0, Web 3.0, and cybersecurity.

Viola Ventures has invested in numerous startups including ironSource, Payoneer, Redis, Verbit, Outbrain, Pagaya, Lightricks and Immunai.
 
2021 was a bumper year for Israeli tech. Tech firms raised $25.6B (representing 136% growth in equity investments over 2020) and 22 tech companies went public with a cumulative market cap of over$84B.

Viola Ventures says eight of its portfolio companies reached unicorn status. IronSource went public at a valuation of $11B. Pagaya has announced its public listing at an $8.5B valuation.

Danny Cohen, General Partner at Viola Ventures said: “It’s not only important to invest in high-performing companies but to invest in them early. Our track record proves that we know how to identify outstanding teams, aggressively be the first money, and then support them to unicorn status and beyond. We are confident that our sixth fund will help grow the next generation of market leaders.”
 
The fund recently promoted Yael Alroy, a principal at the fund, to Partner and appointed a dedicated Partner from the executive search industry, Jeff Shapiro.