European Investment Fund

About

The European Investment Fund (EIF) is the European Union's financing arm for SMEs and mid-caps, part of the EIB Group and headquartered in Luxembourg. Set up in 1994, it does not invest or lend directly to businesses. Instead it provides equity funding and guarantees through a network of close to 1,900 partners, so that funds can invest in start-ups and scale-ups and lenders can lend to SMEs. Its activities cover EU member states, EU candidate and potential candidate countries and EFTA countries, and it deploys EU mandates such as InvestEU. Companies it names as having backed include Spotify, Vinted, BlaBlaCar, Skyscanner and WeTransfer.