Luxembourg State and seven investors have signed a letter of commitment to constitute a seed fund for ICT start-ups – Gouvernement.lu – press article
In order to provide a suitable framework for creating and developing new innovative businesses, the Ministry of the Economy has decided, as part of “Digital Lëtzebuerg”, to set up an ecosystem in line with the needs of start-ups in the sector of information and communication technologies (ICT), particularly with regard to the financing of such businesses during their initial and start-up stages.
On 14 December 2015 Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy Étienne Schneider and the representatives of seven other investors, including Arendt & Medernach, signed a letter of commitment to constitute a seed fund. The signatories have agreed to gather public and private funds amounting to 19.2 million euros to create such a structure for financing new innovative high-tech businesses in the ICT sector.
The main but not exclusive aim of the fund will be to make venture capital investments in projects which have reached the proof of concept stage in fields such as cybersecurity, fintech, big data, digital health, telecommunications and satellite services, and the “Internet of things”. To facilitate the transfer of new technologies resulting from public-funded research, particularly that carried out by the University of Luxembourg’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT), a further aim of the seed fund is to invest in promising spin-offs in order to generate as much beneficial economic impact in the Grand Duchy as possible. This move is a further step in increasing the Grand Duchy’s visibility as a hub for launching new innovative activities in one of the key sectors in the country’s economy.
The seed fund, to be operational from early 2016, will be managed by a team of specialists with the necessary competencies for identifying and selecting projects for innovative businesses with substantial development potential in the Grand Duchy. The future “ICT Seed Fund”, which will be set up shortly, has been developed as part of a partnership between the public and private sectors involving well-known players in economic and financial circles. The stakeholders involved in the Fund will be (in alphabetical order): Arendt & Medernach, Banque Internationale à Luxembourg SA (BIL), High Capital (BHS Services), Luxembourg State, POST Capital, Proximus, SES, and SNCI.