Karista

Karista focuses on early-stage venture capital, writing initial checks at seed and start-up phases while maintaining capacity to follow through growth rounds. The firm’s mandate includes spin-off financings and technology transfer deals where intellectual property originates from research laboratories. This stage flexibility allows Karista to support portfolio companies from pre-commercial validation through expansion.

Karista concentrates on deeptech and digital innovation sectors, with known thematic exposure to enterprise software, digital health, artificial intelligence and machine learning, space technology, and cybersecurity. The firm prioritizes companies with defensible intellectual property, often those emerging from European research institutions. Generalist consumer internet and non-technical business models are not core to the mandate.

Karista sources opportunities through deep relationships with French and European research institutions, university ecosystems, and technology transfer offices, aligning with its deeptech orientation. The Paris base enables proximity to major scientific clusters, and the firm’s sector specialization gives it early visibility into laboratory-born innovations before broader market awareness develops.

Karista operates as a partnership-led venture firm with decision-making authority vested in its senior investment team based in Paris. The firm has maintained a stable partnership structure across multiple fund vintages, though detailed principal names and individual roles are not publicly disclosed.

Karista is structured as an independent asset manager and private equity firm operating as a venture capital fund manager. It is not a single-family office or corporate venture arm, but rather an institutional fund manager raising capital from public investment vehicles, corporate investors, and European limited partners for its fund vehicles.