Acurio Closes Europe's Only Dedicated VC Fund Secondaries Vehicle.
Bilbao-based Acurio Ventures has raised €115 million to hunt the sub-€20 million fund stakes Europe's larger secondaries platforms won't touch.
Acurio Ventures has closed Acurio Secondaries I FCR, a €115 million vehicle dedicated exclusively to fund-level secondary transactions involving European venture capital funds, beating its original €100 million target in what several of the firm’s peers have called the toughest European VC fundraising environment in a generation. The Bilbao-based manager, founded in 2018 by Ander Michelena (a Ticketbis co-founder), Diego Recondo, Kate Cornell and Hugo Fernández-Mardomingo, now oversees more than €450 million across five vehicles: three direct-investment funds and two dedicated to fund secondaries.
The headline number is not really the point. What makes this fund editorially interesting is where Acurio says it is choosing not to compete: the firm is targeting stakes below €20 million in mature venture funds, a segment it argues is systematically ignored by the continent-scale secondaries platforms, the Ardians, Collers and Blackstone Strategic Partners of the world, whose deal sizes and staffing economics make sub-€20 million LP interests uneconomical to chase.
Twelve months after an initial close at the end of June 2025, the fund has committed close to €45 million and reports a TVPI of 1.75x, a mark-up Acurio attributes to the discounts negotiated on entry rather than to underlying portfolio performance since acquisition. That distinction matters: it’s the discount, not distributions, doing the work at this stage, which is exactly the mechanism that lets a secondaries buyer claim to have side-stepped the J-curve before the portfolio has had time to season.
"We continue to seek creative and differentiated strategies adapted to market conditions, with the aim of continuing to generate value for our investors and developing into a leading firm in Europe." ANDER MICHELENA, FOUNDING PARTNER, ACURIO VENTURES
THE STRUCTURE
What an FCR Is, and Why “Fund-Level” Isn’t “GP-Led”
Acurio Secondaries I is structured as a Spanish Fondo de Capital Riesgo (FCR), the domestic venture capital fund vehicle regulated under Spain’s private equity framework. Its strategy sits on the LP-led side of the secondaries market: buying existing limited partner interests in mature European VC funds, rather than engineering GP-led continuation vehicles around single or multiple assets.
That distinction is worth holding onto. The 2026 European venture narrative has been dominated by primary fund closes and by GP-led activity further down in private equity. A dedicated LP-led secondaries strategy in venture, buying into funds eight-plus years into their terms, with identifiable value drivers and realistic two-to-three-year exit paths, remains comparatively rare on the continent, which is the basis for Acurio’s claim to be the only European firm running a fund built exclusively around this approach.
The capital base is instructive. Roughly 30% came from institutional investors, including an undisclosed large US-based endowment, pension plans, and more than 35 family offices, a mix Acurio frames as validation given the fundraising conditions of the past year. The GP commitment exceeds €15 million, a figure well above what’s typical for a fund of this size, which the firm is positioning as an alignment signal to LPs evaluating a first-time dedicated secondaries strategy.
"Successfully launching a new fund of this nature in such a difficult fundraising market for VC, and doing so with a 100% private investor base that includes prestigious institutional investors, is a milestone and a validation that reinforces the strategy we have been pursuing."DIEGO RECONDO, PARTNER, ACURIO VENTURES
A Crowded Year for European Fund Closes, But Not This Kind
Acurio’s close lands in a year that has already produced several sizeable European venture fund announcements, most of them primary vehicles rather than secondaries strategies. Kembara reported a €750 million first close toward a €1 billion deeptech target; Earlybird VC closed Fund VIII at €360 million; Seedcamp raised €279 million across its first-cheque and follow-on vehicles; and DFF Ventures closed a €70 million Fund III. Spanish peers have also been active, with Samaipata, Ysios Capital and Mission announcing funds targeting €110 million, €100 million and €35 million respectively.
That’s the framing worth sitting with. Every other fund on that list is solving for deployment, getting capital into companies or into new fund vintages. Acurio is solving for the opposite problem: what happens to capital that’s already been deployed, into funds that are now eight-plus years old, with LPs and GPs alike facing a market where IPO windows have narrowed and M&A exits increasingly require far larger revenue and EBITDA thresholds than they did a few years ago. The two dynamics, a primary market still raising at pace, and a secondaries market forming around the maturing back-book of that same period, aren’t in tension. They’re two views of the same European venture cycle.
The Dual-Strategy Argument
Acurio’s direct-investment track record gives the secondaries pitch some texture. The firm has invested in roughly 120 European companies through its direct strategy, with a portfolio that includes Seedtag, Voy, Preply, Jobandtalent, Indexa Capital, Lingokids and Refurbed. Its latest direct vehicle, Acurio Ventures III, closed above €150 million in 2024 and remains in its investment period, holding more than 40 companies. The firm was also disclosed as an investor in Lexroom’s €42.9 million Series B in May 2026.
The argument Acurio is making to LPs is that running both strategies under one roof, direct exposure to founders and portfolio companies, alongside fund-level secondaries, gives the firm visibility into both sides of the market it says it wants to help unlock: the GPs holding maturing portfolios, and the underlying companies whose exit timing determines whether those funds can eventually return capital.