• Keen Venture Partners secured €40M from the EU-backed European Investment Fund (EIF).
  • This is EIF’s first equity commitment under its €175M Defence Equity Facility.
  • The new €125M fund will target defence and dual-use technologies across Europe

Amsterdam-based Keen Venture Partners is receiving €40 million from the European Investment Fund (EIF), backed by the EU’s InvestEU Space mandate. The investment will go toward Keen’s newly launched defence-focused fund, which is targeting a €125 million total raise.

This marks the first equity commitment from the EIF’s €175 million Defence Equity Facility—an initiative designed to stimulate innovation in Europe’s strategic defence and security sectors.

This is Keen’s first dedicated defence vehicle but the firm already has experience investing in dual-use startups, including:

  • Perciv AI – AI-powered radar systems
  • Avalor AI – Software for unmanned systems

Why it matters

There is growing momentum around private sector involvement in national security innovation. EIF’s backing of Keen signals institutional support for a new generation of VC-driven defence solutions focused on agility, autonomy, and AI. Giuseppe Lacerenza, a partner at Keen said in a statement:

“Strengthening Europe’s defence and security through private capital, combined with the ingenuity and perseverance of entrepreneurs, is only just beginning.” 

Here are some of the key defence problems the fund is trying to solve:

  • Swarming software and communications: Technology used for coordinating autonomous systems in contested environments. Including AI platforms for enabling autonomous swarming for drones, ground vehicles and naval vessels 
  • Ultra rapid deployment capacity: Solutions for secure, high-speed networks and operational systems in remote, hostile or disaster-hit environments. Especially systems designed for quick set up offering reliable comms channels. 
  • AI-enhance commands: The use of real-time intelligence to augment command decisions. In other words AI for things like battlefield analytics and real-time threat detection. 
  • Warfare control systems: Systems that enable military forces to plan, coordinate, and execute operations across air, land, sea, space, and cyber domains—the digital backbone of modern combat
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