GEM Capital

Anatoly Paliy, the firm's Founder and Managing Partner, leads investment decisions. Paliy built GEM in 2017 after operating as a principal investor in technology companies. The firm has not publicly named additional investment committee members or senior partners beyond its founder, suggesting a centralized decision-making structure.

GEM concentrates on startups with roots in the CIS, Central and Eastern Europe, and Israel. While many portfolio companies eventually domicile in London, New York, or Singapore, GEM's origination network is weighted toward founders from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and neighboring markets. The firm's Cyprus headquarters provides EU regulatory cover and banking access for portfolio companies navigating cross-border operations.

GEM operates as a flexible participant, taking both lead and co-investor roles depending on the round. In earlier-stage deals, the firm has led seed and Series A rounds, while in growth-stage transactions it frequently appears as a co-investor alongside larger European and US venture funds. The firm does not market itself as a lead-investor-only mandate.

Two publicly traceable names are Arrival, the British electric-vehicle company that went public through a SPAC merger in 2021, and Acronis, the cybersecurity and data-protection platform founded by Serguei Beloussov. GEM has also backed TransferGo, a cross-border payments company that closed a $100 million Series C in 2023, and maintains undisclosed positions in enterprise-AI and climate-hardware startups.

Cyprus sits inside the European Union and maintains an extensive double-taxation treaty network, including with Russia and other CIS states. For GEM, this structure allows it to pool capital without triggering automatic withholding or controlled-foreign-corporation complications that might arise from a Moscow or Dubai hub. It also gives portfolio companies a pathway to EU banking and regulatory frameworks — an increasingly valuable attribute as geopolitical sanctions reshape the region's financial plumbing.