Nexit Ventures Raises 75 Million Euros (USD $94.4 Million)

Nexit Ventures, a cross-stage venture capital firm with offices in Saratoga, Calif., Helsinki, and Stockholm, has raised 75 million Euros for a second fund to fuel mobile startups with transatlantic ambitions.

The fund includes capital commitments from mobile giant Nokia, and Tapiola Group, a Finnish insurance and financial group and it’s already backed four startups: mobile TV company Axel Technologies in Finland; Ekahau, a Saratoga-based company selling WiFi-enabled RFID tags to businesses; open-source mobile e-mail and platform provider Funambol in Redwood City, Calif.; and  Conformiq,  Finnish startup whose software runs online testing automatically.

Nexit’s new fund is substantially bigger than its first, which closed with $17 million in 2000, according to Thomson Reuters. Three of the startups in that portfolio have been purchased, including Bitfone, which raised $86.3 million before being acquired for undisclosed amount by Hewlett Packard last year.

Nexit’s team is a lot bigger than it was in 2000, too. Founders Artturi Tarjanne and Michel Wendell have added Pekka Salonoja, a 20-year veteran of Nokia, to its Helsinki office; serial mobile entrepreneur Michael Mandahl to its Stockholm office, and brought aboard venture partners Patrice Peyret and David Aslin in Silicon Valley. Peyret, formerly a director at Sun Microsystems, is CEO of the prepaid card company Plastyc; Aslin is a former partner with 3i.