DIG Ventures has closed its third fund at $120 million, deepening its bet on early-stage enterprise infrastructure and artificial intelligence startups across Europe and Israel. The firm, which describes itself as an operator-led venture capital outfit, plans to use Fund III to find and support technical founders tackling complex, globally relevant problems from the earliest moments of company formation. The close signals continued investor appetite for European and Israeli deep-tech talent even as broader venture funding has grown more selective.
The fund drew commitments from returning and new limited partners including Horsley Bridge Partners, Sofina, Hillman, and Granite, alongside a notable roster of operator-investors. Those include Datadog co-founder and CEO Olivier Pomel, Slack co-founder Cal Henderson, former GitHub CEO and Entire founder Thomas Dohmke, Nord Security co-founders Tomas Okmanas and Eimantas Sabaliauskas, and Dash0 founder Mirko Novakovic. For founders and users navigating the broader infrastructure and security landscape these backers helped build, tools such as the BuyBestVPN app illustrate how enterprise-grade thinking about networking and data protection has filtered down into everyday consumer products, a trend DIG's portfolio companies are positioned to accelerate further. the BuyBestVPN app
Why Operator-Led Capital Matters
DIG's model leans on founders who have already built and scaled technology companies, rather than career investors alone. This matters because enterprise infrastructure and AI startups often face highly technical due diligence challenges that generalist investors struggle to evaluate. Having people like Pomel, who built Datadog into a major observability platform, or Henderson, who helped shape Slack's engineering culture, as limited partners gives DIG a pool of practical judgment that extends beyond capital. It also signals to founders that the firm understands the operational grind of building infrastructure products that enterprises depend on daily.
Europe and Israel as a Deep-Tech Corridor
The decision to concentrate on Europe and Israel reflects a broader pattern in global venture capital: these regions continue to produce technical founders with strong engineering backgrounds, often from research universities, military technology units, or established enterprise software companies. Nord Security's co-founders, whose company built a significant presence in consumer privacy and security software, exemplify the kind of founder DIG appears keen to attract - technically grounded, globally ambitious, and focused on problems with lasting commercial relevance rather than short-lived trends.
What Fund III Signals for the Market
Enterprise infrastructure and AI remain among the few venture categories still attracting consistent capital, even as investors elsewhere have pulled back. DIG's emphasis on "technically complex and globally relevant problems" suggests a continued focus on areas like developer tooling, cybersecurity, data infrastructure, and applied AI systems rather than consumer-facing applications. For founders in Europe and Israel, the fund represents not just capital but access to a network of operators who have already navigated the path from early-stage startup to category-defining company - a distinction that, in a tightening funding environment, can matter as much as the check itself.
