Balderton Capital is a London-based early-stage venture capital firm with a long track record across European technology. It started in 2000 as the European arm of US firm Benchmark Capital, operating under the name Benchmark Capital Europe. In 2007 the team spun out independently and rebranded as Balderton Capital, retaining its portfolio and investing autonomy. Since then the firm has closed nine funds. Fund IX, announced in 2022, raised $685 million, bringing estimated total capital under management to over $4 billion across all vintages. Balderton backs companies at Series A, occasionally pre-Series A, and focuses almost exclusively on Europe – primarily the UK, France, Germany, and the Nordics.
The firm is a generalist investor but has built recurring positions in fintech, developer tooling, marketplaces, and – increasingly since 2018 – crypto infrastructure. Its check sizes at entry range from $5 million to $30 million, with reserves for follow-on. Balderton typically takes a board seat and leads rounds rather than co-investing passively, which explains the high ratio of lead deals in its crypto portfolio.
Notable investments
- Ledger – the Paris-based hardware wallet maker behind the Nano S and Nano X devices. Balderton participated in early growth rounds. Ledger reached a $1.5 billion valuation in 2021 and remains one of the largest non-custodial wallet providers globally.
- Sorare – NFT-based fantasy football platform. Balderton backed the company before its $680 million Series B in 2021 led by SoftBank.
- Revolut – UK fintech and crypto brokerage. An early Balderton position that grew into one of Europe's highest-valued private companies, with crypto trading a core product feature.
- GoCardless – open banking payments infrastructure, relevant to on-ramp and settlement layers in crypto.
- Depop – peer-to-peer fashion marketplace acquired by Etsy for $1.6 billion in 2021, one of the firm's clearest realized exits.
- Betfair – online betting exchange, an early landmark win that IPO'd in 2010 and later merged with Paddy Power.
- MySQL – open-source database acquired by Sun Microsystems for roughly $1 billion in 2008.
Public information on the full list of Balderton's crypto-native positions beyond Ledger and Sorare is limited. The firm does not publish a complete portfolio breakdown by sector.
Team
- Tim Bunting – founding General Partner, carried over from the Benchmark Capital Europe era. One of the longer-tenured GPs at any European VC firm.
- Suranga Chandratillake – General Partner, previously founder of video search company Blinkx (LSE-listed). Leads investments in developer platforms and AI.
- Daniel Waterhouse – General Partner, focuses on consumer and fintech. Has board seats across several fintech portfolio companies.
- Rana Yared – General Partner, joined from Goldman Sachs where she led blockchain and digital asset strategy at the principal investment level. Her hire in 2020 signaled Balderton's intent to deepen crypto coverage.
- Rob Moffat – Partner, covers marketplaces and SaaS.
- James Wise – Partner, focuses on B2B software and data.
Recent activity
Balderton closed Fund IX at $685 million in 2022, one of the larger early-stage funds raised in Europe that year despite a cooling macro environment. The firm has continued to back fintech and crypto infrastructure founders, with Rana Yared maintaining an active role in sourcing blockchain-adjacent deals. In 2023 and 2024 the firm kept a lower public profile on crypto amid the post-FTX sentiment shift, consistent with most institutional European VCs. No major announced crypto exits or write-downs have been reported publicly as of early 2026.
Balderton has also been active in AI infrastructure investments from 2023 onward, which overlaps with on-chain AI agent narratives gaining traction in crypto. The firm's London base gives it natural access to a dense European founder ecosystem, and its public materials emphasize long-hold, founder-aligned strategies rather than short-cycle token plays. For deeper due diligence, the firm's Crunchbase profile tracks deal announcements, though it does not reflect undisclosed positions. Coverage from TechCrunch offers a running record of announced rounds.