• Connect Ventures has raised $55m in a first close of its fifth fund and is repositioning toward deeptech founders, according to an exclusive Sifted report — the fund's eventual target size is not confirmed by any available source.
• Connect's prior two funds each closed at $80m — Fund III in 2020 and Fund IV in 2023, both reported by TechCrunch — setting a scale against which Fund V's ambitions will likely be measured, though nothing confirms Fund V will match it.
• The pivot breaks from the "product-led" seed thesis Connect built its brand on, including Fund IV's own 2023 tagline, "Product is back, baby," per TechCrunch.
• Fund IV's disclosed 2023 portfolio already included one generative-AI infrastructure bet, Dust, alongside core B2B software names Plain and Sprinque, per TechCrunch — a single data point, not confirmed evidence of an earlier strategy shift.
• Connect's own track record is mixed, not uniformly successful: Typeform's $135m Series C valued the company at over $900m per TechCrunch, while Citymapper's acquisition by Via was, in TechCrunch's own words, "effectively a washout."

Connect Ventures has closed $55m of a planned fifth fund, according to an exclusive report from Sifted — and the London seed investor is aiming that capital at deeptech founders, a departure from the product-led software thesis that built its name. Sifted's report does not specify a final target for Fund V, but Connect's two most recent funds — an $80m third fund closed in 2020 and an $80m fourth fund closed in 2023, both reported by TechCrunch — set a scale against which Fund V will likely be measured. Connect's three general partners, Pietro Bezza, Rory Stirling and Sitar Teli, have run the firm together since founding it in 2012.

The Numbers So Far — And What's Missing

The $55m figure is the one hard number in Sifted's report: a first close, not a final one. What isn't disclosed is a target size for Fund V. Context comes from Connect's own recent history: Fund III closed at $80m in 2020 and Fund IV closed at $80m in 2023, the latter anchored by a £20m commitment from British Patient Capital, per the British Business Bank, alongside returning LPs De Agostini, Big Society Capital, Top Tier and Molten Ventures. Whether Fund V reaches that same $80m mark is unconfirmed.

From Product-Led to Deeptech

Connect built its reputation on what it called a product-led thesis — seed checks into software founders focused on product strategy and defensibility, summed up in Fund IV's 2023 tagline, "Product is back, baby," per TechCrunch. Fund V's framing around deeptech founders is a clear departure from that language. Connect has not published a strategy document defining the new thesis's boundaries — whether it spans hard-science spinouts, applied-AI infrastructure, or both remains unaddressed beyond Sifted's initial report.

A Track Record With Real Misses, Not Just Wins

Connect's pitch rests partly on early bets that scaled: Typeform, backed from an early round, later raised a $135m Series C at a valuation over $900m, per TechCrunch, and TrueLayer grew into an open-banking payments company as the firm's later funds matured. But the record is not unbroken. Connect was also an early investor in Citymapper, and its eventual acquisition by Via was, in TechCrunch's own 2023 reporting, "effectively a washout." A deeptech thesis will be judged against this mixed history, not an unblemished one.

One Existing AI-Adjacent Bet

The pivot isn't emerging with zero prior AI exposure. Connect's Fund IV portfolio, disclosed in 2023, included Dust, a generative-AI infrastructure startup, alongside core B2B software names Plain and Sprinque, TechCrunch reported. That's one portfolio company, not a stated strategy shift — Fund IV's public messaging centered on product-led software, not deeptech. It shows the firm wasn't entirely absent from AI-adjacent bets before Fund V, but falls short of proving the reframing was already underway as house strategy.

What to Watch

Two things will show whether the pivot holds: how much more capital the $55m first close attracts, and which specific companies Connect discloses as its first deeptech-labeled investments. Until those land, the fund is best read as a directional signal rather than a proven strategy shift. The verdict: a credible re-pointing by a firm with a genuine seed-stage track record that includes both a marquee outcome in Typeform and an acknowledged miss in Citymapper — not yet a demonstrated one in deeptech.