From EdTech to “HumanOS”: Brighteye Ventures announces €62.4 million Fund III first close
Brighteye Ventures, the Luxembourg-based VC firm that backs European companies rethinking how people learn and work, has announced a €62.4 million ($72 million) first close of its third fund.
The first close of Fund III brings in a set of new limited partners: the Lumina Foundation, Italian publishing group Zanichelli and PI Impact. They join existing backers, including the European Investment Fund (EIF), the Jacobs Foundation and a number of European family offices.
“The defining opportunity of the AI era is not replacing humans with machines. It is expanding what humans can do with machines. Autonomous intelligence multiplies the potential value of human skills, judgement, and talent,” said Ben Wirz, Founding Partner at Brighteye.
Wirz and Alex Spiro Latsis founded Brighteye Ventures in 2017, focusing on early-stage EdTech across Europe and North America. The firm has invested in more than 50 companies since its founding, and those businesses have collectively raised over €866 million ($1 billion) in follow-on capital, with several now generating more than €86.6 million ($100 million) in annual revenue.
Brighteye typically writes initial cheques of €400k to €4 million from pre-Seed to Series A, usually leading or co-leading rounds, reserving capital for follow-ons and taking hands-on board seats. It looks for European companies with global ambition and a path to more than €100 million in revenue, operating from offices in London and Paris. Its portfolio includes Zen Educate, Ornikar, Hack The Box, Shakers and installer.
The first close of Fund III takes the early-stage investor’s total assets under management to €212.2 million ($245 million). The firm said the raise comes as venture funding for the sector across Europe more than doubled in a single year.
According to Brighteye’s own European Learning & Work Funding Report 2026, the venture funding raised by European companies in the space jumped from €714.5 million ($825 million) in 2024 to €1.60 billion ($1.85 billion), the strongest annual total since 2021. The firm’s H1 2026 update puts the figure at €1.41 billion ($1.63 billion) for the first half of this year alone, a pace that would come close to doubling last year’s total.
With Fund III, Brighteye is expanding beyond the traditional EdTech sector to what the firm calls the HumanOS: technology that helps people learn, work and adapt. It argues that AI’s economic value will not be unlocked by deploying models alone, and that as machine intelligence becomes cheap, human capability turns into either the constraint or the multiplier.
“Our conviction is that the next generation of category-defining companies will use technology to redefine human capability. We call this the HumanOS and we’re partnering early with the founders building in this space,” added Wirz.
The firm plans to back early-stage startups where AI is genuinely embedded in teaching and learning workflows; intelligence and productivity platforms aimed at high-stakes settings such as healthcare, education, infrastructure, cybersecurity and climate; and managed labour platforms and talent software built for a more volatile, agent-assisted labour market.
The firm has already made eight investments from Fund III. While some are still unannounced, it has revealed investments in Swedish startup imagi, which helps schools build AI fluency; NEX Health Intelligence, which supports hospital infection-control teams; and Gyver, a marketplace for electricians pitched at Europe’s growing energy infrastructure demand.
Alongside the close, the firm unveiled a new brand and website built with Justified Studio, expanded its Sidekick content platform, and promoted David Guérin to Partner, Isabella Vahdati to Principal and Rhys Spence to Head of Platform and Research.
Brighteye expects to make up to 35 investments from Fund III and says it is actively seeking founders working at the intersection of AI, learning, productivity and labour infrastructure.
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