Emerge Education, a London-based investment firm focused on ed tech, has announced the first close of a new fund¸ Tech EU has reported.

The fund currently sits at £10 million, with investments from Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Assessment, Nesta, Jisc, Brazilian higher education group Grupo Tiradentes, as well as US education industry executives Dan Sommer and Rob Cohen. The company stated that it expects the fund to double over the next few months.

Emerge Education is committed to building a portfolio of start-ups creating new, tech-based forms of education, training or upskilling, and lifelong learning that are “massively scalable”.

The fund is initially making £250,000 investments in 20 to 25 pre-seed and seed European companies, with the ability to increase its funding to £1 million in each company in later rounds.

Emerge’s founder Jan Lynn-Matern said: “Unlike other funds, 50% of our team is fully focused on nurturing our network and extracting valuable insights from the most important groups of customers and partners our portfolio companies serve. In return, we act as an innovation radar for this network. Over 20 of these network members have invested in our fund.”

Sommer said: “I have seen some very interesting start-ups coming out of Europe recently. At 10-times, we are always looking at global education trends which made an investment in Emerge a natural fit.”