SWEDEN- AP6, the Swedish national fund specialising in private equity, is launching a new company investing seed capital in high tech companies in the Nordic region.

AP6 is starting Creandum with Skandia Life and both are committing Sek100m while AP6 is guaranteeing the company will have a mimumum of Sek300m from the outset.

“We’re basically sponsoring the fund,” says Till Gutzen, AP6’s man responsible for launching the company. Both parties are looking for three or four additional institutional investors to join the project.

There is an unspecified cap on the size of investible capital and fundraising is likely to close at the end of the year. Gutzen is in the process of hiring four people to run the company although the headcount will eventually be eight.

The new venture will not finance projects but will instead concentrate on the very early stage financing of companies. As such it will work with Universities and research institutes from the outset, according to Gutzen who says many of the investments are likely to be in companies

AP6 already has Sek11bn of its Sek17bn committed to private equity, little of which is invested in early stage private equity. “We’d like to be investing in seed capital which is a more difficult area to get into,” says Gutzen.