TL;DRAlem Capital anchored the $25M final close of Sturgeon’s Central Asia VC fund, its first public regional startup investment.
Kazakhstan’s Alem Capital Management has anchored a regional venture capital fund backing technology startups across Central Asia and the Caucasus, marking the fund-of-funds manager’s first publicly disclosed investment in the region’s startup ecosystem. Alem participated in the $25 million final close of Sturgeon Capital’s Emerging Opportunities II fund, joining existing and new investors including the International Finance Corporation, according to a statement from Sturgeon.
Alem manages a fund-of-funds with a target size of one billion dollars, making it the largest vehicle of its kind focused on the region. Its five million dollar commitment to the Sturgeon fund is modest relative to that headline figure, but the signal matters more than the size: a Kazakh institutional investor is now backing the same London-based manager that the World Bank’s private-sector arm chose as its entry point into Central Asian venture capital.
Sturgeon Emerging Opportunities II, known as SEO II, has made 11 investments and is completing a twelfth. The portfolio spans logistics, content infrastructure, and enterprise automation, with the latest addition being Geomotive, an analytics company that provides AI-powered solutions for advertising, retail, sports venues, and commercial real estate.
