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Most venture capital firms get their start in Silicon Valley. It took Antler almost a decade to open its first office there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 2025, venture capital firm Antler opened its 27th global office in San Francisco, its third office in the U.S. following Austin and New York City.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSilicon Valley is still the biggest ecosystem in the world,\u201d Antler\u2019s Norwegian founder Magnus Grimeland said at the VC firm\u2019s Singapore headquarters. But Grimeland\u2019s late entry into Silicon Valley reflects his firm\u2019s approach on building a venture capital firm. \u201cPeople can innovate from almost anywhere, and at a level they weren\u2019t able to before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eight years after its founding, Antler has expanded to 27 cities across six continents, with more than 1,500 investments and more than $1 billion in assets under management. In 2024, Pitchbook deemed it the world\u2019s most active venture capital firm. Last year, Antler made more than 400 investments, roughly one every 22 hours, and raised $510 million in new capital, including a $160 million U.S.-focused fund closed in December.<\/p>\n
Antler\u2019s model is simple: Find brilliant people before they start a company, then help them build one. And while Antler has a limited track record\u2014none of its portfolio companies have launched an IPO\u2014Grimeland thinks a global footprint and an AI application boom is going to set his VC fund up for success.\u00a0<\/p>\n
How Antler got started<\/p>\n
After a stint as a soldier in Norway\u2019s Special Forces and a consultant in McKinsey, Grimeland became a startup founder, moving to Singapore to set up Zalora, Southeast Asia\u2019s first major fashion e-commerce platform, in 2013. Rocket Internet, one of Zalora\u2019s backers, eventually consolidated the platform into a new company called Global Fashion Group, and Grimeland became its chief operating officer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Southeast Asia was a trial-by-fire for Grimeland. \u201cThe region has hundreds of millions of people, hundreds of thousands of islands, a little bit of corruption and fraud, and everyone uses cash,\u201d Grimeland says. \u201cWe thought we were starting a tech company, but instead we ended up building physical infrastructure like warehouses and roads.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zalora became a training ground for a whole host of other startup founders. Kevin Aluwi and Nadiem Makarim, co-founders of the Indonesian ride-hailing app Gojek, are Zalora alumni. Michele Ferrario, Zalora\u2019s group CEO, founded StashAway, a Singaporean wealth management startup. Other Zalora executives founded ShopBack, a consumer rewards startup.<\/p>\n
Grimeland eventually jumped ship himself, founding Antler in 2017. \u201cOur ambition was to be the first investor into the world\u2019s greatest talents, no matter where they come from or what their background is,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n
Antler positioned itself as a \u201cday zero\u201d investor, meaning it backs founders from the very start, before they\u2019ve even started building their businesses. The firm\u2019s flagship residency program gives founders up to $400,000 in initial investment and access to a network of mentors and advisors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Two Antler companies became unicorns last year: eSIM marketplace Airalo, worth above $1 billion, and Swedish vibe coding platform, Lovable, which was valued at $6.6 billion as of last December. (In March, Lovable reported $400 million in annual recurring revenue). Yet none of Antler\u2019s investments, as of now, have tapped the public markets, the traditional exit for a VC-backed startup.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Not everyone sees Antler\u2019s aggressive and widespread funding as an asset. Some observers, uncharitably, have called it \u201cspray and pray\u201d; essentially, arguing that venture funds like Antler invest in everything and hope that something works out.<\/p>\n
Grimeland pushes back against such critiques. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to get the flywheel off the ground, but then you learn to do things better,\u201d he acknowledges, adding that \u201cthe first fund Antler raised was completely based on personal relationships, plus my own money from the Zalora sale.\u201d He now claims Antler raises more money each week than it did during its first year. The firm raised $510 million in 2025 alone.<\/p>\n
Grimeland isn\u2019t alone in sticking with a diversified approach; Carta\u2019s Peter Walker, based on simulations, has suggested that smaller bets on more companies is a better approach for all but the most successful venture funds.<\/p>\n
That being said, Antler is considering moving past its lane of funding founders that are just getting started. \u201cMoving forward, we want to launch a growth vehicle where we can continue to back people all the way to their IPO or exit,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A global footprint<\/p>\n
At the heart of Antler\u2019s global presence is Grimeland\u2019s belief that innovation is increasingly decentralized, and founders can be found anywhere. The firm now covers more than 20 cities across six continents; Grimeland thinks there\u2019s still room to expand to as many as five new locations (which would bring its footprint to around 35 offices).\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Grimeland, that means a firm without a global on-the-ground presence will always lose out. \u201cWe see VCs flying from the rest of the world to Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, or Manila, but they\u2019d always end up investing in the third or fourth best founders,\u201d he says. \u201cThe firms with on-the-ground operations know who the strongest founders are, and those founders gravitate toward them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet while future unicorns can be found in any part of the world, Grimeland says that founders need to have a global mindset from day one. \u201cThere was a period of time where you can just focus on building regional companies that become really big,\u201d he says. \u201cBut if you look at the biggest companies we have in our portfolio now, they\u2019re the ones that are winning globally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Antler now sees Africa as a growth area for tomorrow\u2019s startups. The fund opened an office in Nairobi in 2019, and in Lagos in 2025. When Antler launched on the continent, it received 5,000 applications which eventually got whittled down to its first cohort of 40 founders.<\/p>\n
Grimeland thinks Africa looks like Southeast Asia a decade ago, with a \u201ctremendous number of people who want to build.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople have been talking about Africa for a very long time, but now it feels like the fundamentals of the economies are growing very rapidly,\u201d he said. \u201cAntler can provide access and capital, and when we do that, people build incredible companies.\u201d<\/p>\n
The AI application boom<\/p>\n
Artificial intelligence, which Grimeland calls the \u201cbiggest opportunity\u201d he\u2019s ever seen, is Antler\u2019s next big swing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lovable is probably Antler\u2019s greatest success so far. The European vibe-coding startup hit $100 million in annual recurring revenue just eight months after its founding; a recent funding round in December helped make co-founder Fabian Hedin, at 26, Europe\u2019s youngest self-made billionaire.<\/p>\n
In addition to Lovable, other AI bets by Antler include wrtn technologies, a South Korea startup that uses AI to generate stories for its users, and which is also on track to hit $100 million in annual recurring revenue this year. (Antler partner and wrtn backer Martell Hardenberg, in an interview with Fortune, previously cited the \u201cloneliness epidemic\u201d for his interest in the Korean startup).<\/p>\n
Yet Grimeland thinks that most discussions of AI have focused on \u201cdriving efficiency.\u201d The real opportunity, is instead \u201cwhen AI allows us to start solving problems that haven\u2019t been solved before,\u201d such as how the tech is revolutionizing antibiotic discovery, by crafting novel molecules to fight drug-resistant bacteria.<\/p>\n
Most of the biggest deals around AI have focused on infrastructure, whether foundational model developers like OpenAI or Anthropic, or data center operators. But Grimeland thinks the bigger opportunities will come from companies that build compelling applications on top of that infrastructure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the early days of mobile phones, the most valuable companies in the world were Singtel, AT&T, Cisco, and other infrastructure players,\u201d Grimeland explains. \u201cBut if you think about the mobile ecosystem today, Singtel\u2019s market cap is just a fraction of that of software companies like Meta.\u201d (As of April, Cisco is valued at $354 billion, while Meta is valued at $1.7 trillion).<\/p>\n
Grimeland says founders need to get into AI while the space is still nascent. Today\u2019s entrepreneurs can build startups that solve all the easy problems\u2013and then as the tech matures, the next generation of founders will be stuck with \u201cvery complex stuff where deep experience matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
And if you have an idea? Grimeland says founders-to-be need to stop talking about their plans, and start acting on them. Antler\u2019s own data suggests that the average age of AI founders has plummeted, from 40 in 2020 to 29 in 2024. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing that potentially 25 is the new 30,\u201d Antler co-founder Fridtjof Berge told Fortune in January.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a lot of friends who spend an extraordinary amount of time talking about things they\u2019re very passionate about, and really seem to want to do something about it,\u201d Grimeland says. \u201cBut then, 20 years later, they\u2019re still working at Goldman Sachs.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Fortune\u2019s \u201cAsia Agenda\u201d column, released twice a month, we speak with Asia\u2019s top business leaders about how they are building for the future and the lessons they\u2019ve drawn from leading companies in one of the world\u2019s fastest growing and most dynamic regions. Explore\u00a0all of our profiles here.<\/p>\n
#Antler #CEO #Magnus #Grimeland #Innovation #global #limited #Silicon #Valley<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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