The leading VC fund has a strong Czech connection as Czech-born Jan Hammer is one of the leading Partners of the fund, Vojtech Horna is a Head of Communications and several successfull Czech startups may be found in the Index portfolio, e.g. Rohlik.cz, productboard, Resistant AI or Socialbakers.
“And we were very intentional about the size. I think it would be very easy to just continue raising larger funds. And we had a bottom up approach and looked: ‘What are the sizes of growth rounds happening right now? Where are the opportunities in venture?’” she added.
For venture investment, the firm divides these rounds into two categories: AI and other. AI funding rounds at the seed and Series A stages are much bigger than the average funding round. But non-AI Series A rounds tend to be a bit smaller these days. That’s why it sort of evens out and Index Ventures raised more or less the same amount on that front.
As for late-stage deals, the average size of late-stage rounds has fallen drastically since 2021. That’s why this year’s growth fund is smaller.
“We don’t think about aggregating assets. And I think to your point, other folks in the industry that have gotten big have actually moved towards asset accumulation, which is a totally different strategy,” Shardul Shah, an Index partner based in New York and focused on enterprise investing, infrastructure security and AI, told TechCrunch.
At the same time, the team believes the recent progress in artificial intelligence represents a significant technology breakthrough and could foster a new wave of startup opportunities. “I think at this moment, there’s a real reckoning of the foundation models,” Achadjian said. “It seems like it’s kind of consolidating to three or four companies. It seems there are still some open questions around security, the cost of delivering — these inference costs — and also just how these things are going to scale over time.”
