Mouro Capital has announced the $400 million (€343.4 million) first close of its third investment fund. The capital injection comes directly from the firm’s long-standing anchor limited partner, Banco Santander.
This latest milestone officially pushes Mouro Capital’s total investment commitments beyond the $1 billion mark, solidifying its position as an elite player in the global financial technology ecosystem.
Managed independently by General Partners Manuel Silva Martínez and Christopher Gottschalk, the London-headquartered firm intends to utilise the $400 million vehicle to back early-to-growth-stage companies (from Seed to Series C) across Europe, North America, and Latin America.
Additionally, for the first time in its history, Mouro Capital plans to open the fund to outside institutional investors in the near future.
Moving Beyond Traditional Fintech into AI Infrastructure
While Mouro Capital has historically built its reputation as a powerhouse fintech investor, the firm is aggressively leaning into the deep intersection of financial services, artificial intelligence, and enterprise software.
“With this fund, we’re excited to back the next generation of global founders rewiring financial services through the lens of AI, data, and infrastructure,” said Manuel Silva Martínez.
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The strategy is already actively being deployed. Mouro Capital has quietly completed seven investments from the new fund, notable among them being voice-AI pioneer ElevenLabs and Tokyo-based LLM developer Sakana AI.
According to the firm’s leadership, the convergence of finance and AI is shifting the venture landscape. The firm is hunting for AI-native financial infrastructure, which includes innovations in programmable money movement, real-time payments, and robust identity and data platforms.
Furthermore, the new fund will prioritise three primary sub-sectors:
- Capital Markets & Wealth Management: Fresh positive momentum in these areas has started to pick up speed. These are mature digital readyspaces.
- Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC): A critical frontier driven by changes in artificial intelligence and blockchain, one that must be mastered for corporations to adopt AI.
- Insurtech: A sector that leadership notes remains massively underserved by venture capital.
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A Disciplined, Top-Decile Track Record
Mouro Capital’s fundraising success comes at a time when macro VC activity has faced difficulties. However, the firm’s performance metrics speak for themselves. Since spinning out into an autonomous structure from Santander in 2020, Mouro has recorded 26 successful exits, yielding an average 4x return on invested capital (MOIC). This track record historically places the firm in the top 10% of global venture capital managers.
Furthermore, Mouro’s top ten portfolio companies, which have historically included massive ecosystem names like Ripple, TrueLayer, Upgrade, and Creditas, boast an average five-year compound annual revenue growth rate (CAGR) of 97%.
“The pace of change is accelerating, and product and technology cycles have never been faster,” Silva Martínez said, reiterating his conviction that the fund will stick to a disciplined approach by concentrating on some 30 to 35 high-conviction names, rather than spreading resources too thin. First ticket sizes should be around $8 million to $12 million but will scale significantly higher.
Looking Forward
Mouro Capital is actively expanding its internal operations and has a well-established physical presence in San Francisco, Madrid, and London. By the end of the year, the firm hopes to have 15 professionals on its specialised investment team, having recently attracted talent from prestigious firms like Andreessen Horowitz, FT Partners, and Deloitte.
As Javier García-Carranza, Global Head of Wealth Management & Insurance at Banco Santander, summarised, “Mouro is well placed to identify the founders best positioned to shape the next phase of innovation across the market.”
