Noteus Partners Research
Investment Thesis
Noteus is an independent, specialist pan-European growth equity investor founded in 2023-2024 by a team that split off from Eurazeo, where they had built and run one of Europe's flagship growth-equity franchises for 16 years. The firm invests in fast-growing, category-defining technology companies with proven, scalable business models led by ambitious management teams. Noteus looks beyond current trends to identify long-term secular growth themes, combines strict investment criteria with two decades of accumulated "muscle memory" from growth investing, and prizes deep, long-standing sector relationships over opportunistic deal chasing. The team collectively has more than 70 years of growth-investing experience and, prior to Noteus, oversaw more than €2.6 billion deployed across 27 companies at their previous firm.
Stage Focus
Noteus is a growth-equity investor, not an early-stage fund. It backs scaled technology companies from late-stage venture (Series C/D) through pre-IPO growth rounds, typically alongside other institutional co-investors, private equity firms, and strategics.
Check Size
Exact per-deal check sizes are not publicly disclosed. Observed data points: a $50M investment in Neo4j's Series G (November 2024) and participation as co-lead in Scalable Capital's €155M equity round (June 2025) and Quantum Systems' $1.2B Series D (July 2026, co-led with Blackstone, Airbus, and Advent). This suggests individual checks in the tens of millions of dollars/euros, scaling with round size and syndicate structure.
Lead Tendency
Noteus has co-led several of its highest-profile deals (Scalable Capital, Quantum Systems), indicating it plays an active, structuring role in syndicates rather than a purely passive follow-on position.
Recent Activity
Noteus launched in 2023 when Yann du Rusquec and colleagues left Eurazeo's Growth team. By September 2024 the firm had already deployed more than €300M and was reportedly targeting €600M for its debut institutional fund. In April 2025, Noteus closed the Noteus Bridge Fund — its first institutional investment vehicle — at €413M, above both its €375M target and hard cap, in a nine-month raise backed by sovereign wealth funds, pensions, and OCIOs across Europe, North America, and Asia. The Bridge Fund acquired interests in seven category-leading European tech companies where the team had long-standing relationships, including Fever, Neo4j, and TravelPerk, plus committed blind-pool capital for follow-ons and new deals. Since the Bridge Fund close, Noteus has continued deploying actively: co-leading Scalable Capital's €155M round with Sofina (June 2025) and co-leading Quantum Systems' $1.2B Series D with Blackstone, Airbus, and Advent (July 2026) — Europe's largest defense-technology financing round to date.
Portfolio Highlights
Known portfolio companies include Fever (live-entertainment discovery platform), Neo4j (graph database, later acquired GraphAware to expand into intelligence analysis), TravelPerk (business travel management), Scalable Capital (European investment/brokerage platform), and Quantum Systems (autonomous defense systems). Earlier in his career at Eurazeo, CEO Yann du Rusquec led investments in and sat on the boards of Adjust, Back Market, Contentsquare, Doctolib, Farfetch, ManoMano, PeopleDoc, PayFit, Vestiaire Collective, and Younited — giving the team deep pattern-matching across European tech champions even though those specific companies are not Noteus holdings.
Team
- Yann du Rusquec – Chief Executive Officer; 21+ years of investment experience, formerly led Eurazeo's Growth franchise (€4bn+ AUM, 26+ portfolio companies) and worked at Lazard and Morgan Stanley
- Nathalie Kornhoff Brüls – General Partner
- Guillaume d'Audiffret – General Partner
- Zoé Fabian-Frey – General Partner
- Kate Garvin – Chief Operating Officer
- Laurent Dronniou – Chief Financial Officer
- Jocelyn Roberts – General Counsel
- Yoan Pashov – Principal
- Carlos Fernandez Villar, Dylan Gokani, Moritz Hummel, Phillipp Schmitz – Vice Presidents
- Niccolò Saligari – Associate
- Sebastian Oechsner – Analyst
- Ana Khoo – Senior Associate, Capital Formation
- Romain Richard – Senior Associate, Finance
- Abbie Raymond – Office Manager
- Sabine Bendiek, Emilio Voli – Senior Advisors
Decision Process
A small partnership of a CEO and three General Partners leads investment decisions, supported by a broader deal team of VPs, associates, and analysts — consistent with a partnership-style decision process typical of growth-equity firms of this size.
Founder Preferences
Noteus positions itself as a passionate, entrepreneurial, long-term partner that seeks to empower founders and executives in realizing their vision, emphasizing on-the-ground expertise and hands-on problem solving rather than passive capital.
Geographic Focus
Noteus is pan-European, with offices in Paris, London, Berlin, and Madrid, and describes itself as "born in the same European ecosystem as the companies we partner with," targeting European technology companies scaling across fragmented markets.