European venture firms Kinnevik and Molten Ventures have both warned of “volatility” caused by US president Donald Trump’s recent barrage of tariffs, as the continent’s startups scramble to navigate the uncertainty.
In an annual trading update published Thursday, Swedish VC firm Kinnevik — which has backed the likes of green steel scaleup Stegra and travel platform TravelPerk — marked down the majority of its investments in the first three months of 2025, compared to the previous quarter.
”The start of 2025 has brought volatility and uncertainty across financial markets,” said CEO Georgi Ganev in the company’s annual report, published on Thursday.
“The current market uncertainty could materialise into an overall economic slow-down and a further weakened investor sentiment,” he added. “Such a scenario could weigh on operational performance and valuations in the short term.”
Tariffs immediately raised alarm bells among startups and VCs in European tech when they were announced at the start of April. Some of Europe’s biggest scaleups have postponed IPOs in their wake, and many hardware companies that sell to the US or have supply chain links to tariffed countries are particularly concerned.
“Recent macro events serve as a reminder of how quickly market dynamics can change,” said Ben Wilkinson, CEO of Molten Ventures — a backer of neobank Revolut and crypto wallet Ledger, in the company’s own trading update, also published Thursday. He added: “These events have added short-term volatility, particularly in the public markets”.
Both investors said their portfolio companies, being privately held and mostly software-focused, were sheltered from some of the direct impacts of tariffs.
Mixed results
Although Kinnevik’s core companies, in which TravelPerk, Mews and Pleo are mentioned, performed in line with expectations, on average growing revenues by over 40% in the quarter, the quarterly result was down from previous quarters.
Kinnevik reported an 8% decrease in net asset value (NAV) since the last quarter and an 11% decrease in comparison to the first quarter of last year.
Kinnevik’s two Harald Mix companies, Stegra and heat pump startup Aira, had a 5% and 3% decrease in fair valuation since the end of last quarter. To free up assets, Kinnevik has sold shares for SEK 366m (€33m) in “non-core” companies Danish fintech Lunar, UK fintech XYZ and Australian insurance startup Sure.
Molten said its NAV per share was expected to be around 671p at the end of the financial year 2024-25, up from 662p the previous year. It also reported that the fair value of its portfolio had increased 4% on the previous financial year end, driven by strong performances from Ledger, business phone provider Aircall and Revolut.
Revolut hit a $45bn valuation after raising secondaries in 2024 and is reportedly in talks for another share sale at a $60bn valuation. Molten reported it made £7m from Revolut secondaries last financial year.
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