Invest1 publisher3 min readPublished
Brighteye closes $72M on a thesis that learning software sells as productivity
The London and Paris firm has about 63% of a EUR 100m target in hand, the same target it set for Fund II, and plans up to 35 cheques from it as European learning and work funding doubled to $1.85B in 2025.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Brighteye Ventures has secured a $72M first close for its third fund, taking what it calls Europe's most active learning and work investor to $245M in assets under management.
- Fund III targets EUR 100M with a final close expected in the first half of 2027, and moves beyond edtech into what the firm calls the HumanOS: technology that helps people learn, work and adapt.
- Lumina Foundation, Zanichelli and PI Impact are new limited partners, joining the European Investment Fund, the Jacobs Foundation and several European family offices.
Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint Holding Fund III at Fund II's EUR 100M means Brighteye writes the same size cheques into rounds now priced with twice as much sector money in the market.
- decision The $150K to $500K blink tier commits the firm to picking companies at idea stage, where there is least to diligence, in exchange for more entries per fund.
- capability A vendor that sells capacity instead of coursework can be paid from a productivity budget, which by Wirz's account escapes the return question that has held back corporate training spend.
- exposure imagi's route into schools runs through exclusive agreements with AI app companies including Lovable, so its product depends on vendors it does not control.
Fund III's EUR 100M target is the number Brighteye set for Fund II, and double the EUR 50M debut fund [6]. The $72M first close covers about 63% of the roughly $115M target, leaving some $43M to find before the final close planned for the first half of 2027 [21][2].
More than 90% of the money goes into core cheques of $0.5M to $4M, and the remainder into blink cheques of $150K to $500K at idea stage [8]. The firm expects up to 35 investments [9]. Ninety per cent of $115M is about $103M, which across 35 companies averages roughly $3M a name, near the top of the core range [22]. Fees come out of the same fund, so either the cheques sit lower in that range or the count sits below 35. Wirz told TFN the earlier skew is deliberate: "The portfolio construction is skewed slightly earlier than it did before because I think you can build more with less" [7].
The relabelling is about a budget line. Uphill, a Fund II company, started as a learning platform for healthcare and became a productivity platform inside hospitals [13]. "Corporations have always paid some for training, but they've always been a little bit reluctant because they're never quite sure what the return on that spend is," Wirz said [15]. "Now you can say, you're not actually just paying for learning, you're paying for productivity" [16].
Brighteye's own European Learning and Work Funding Report puts sector funding at $1.85B in 2025, up from $825M in 2024 and level with 2021 [10], with $1.63B raised in the first half of 2026 [11]. Annualise the half and you get $3.26B, about 1.76 times last year [24]. The figures are sector totals, and the account does not split them by stage [27]. That cuts two ways. If the new money is landing above seed, a flat EUR 100M target is consistent with it, and Brighteye's $245M of assets, about 13% of a single year of sector funding, is not what sets entry prices [23]. If it is landing at seed, the same purse is bidding for the same companies against more capital.
The evidence supports the budget claim more than the rotation claim: one Fund II company changed what it sold, portfolio companies have raised over $1B in aggregate and several are past $100M in annual revenue [12], and the fund raising to back that is the same size as the last one [6]. Fund III's first three cheques went to imagi, which holds exclusive agreements with AI app companies including Lovable, the $13.3B vibe-coding unicorn, to bring their tools into schools in a guardrailed, curriculum-aligned way [18]; NEX Health Intelligence, for hospital infection-control teams; and Gyver, a B2B labour marketplace for electricians in Italy [19]. Asked which of the three categories he would back with his final cheque, Wirz said, "It's like asking me to choose between my children" [20].
What to watch
- Second-half 2026 sector funding: come in below the first half's $1.63B and the $3.26B annualised pace overstates the year.
- Whether the final close lands the full EUR 100m by the first half of 2027 or stops nearer the $72M already in.
- Whether later Fund III cheques keep going to workplace buyers, as NEX Health Intelligence and Gyver did.