12 September 2025

 

In a move that underscores the growing importance of infrastructure in the private markets, ROYC has announced a strategic, full-stack partnership with G Squared. Mathias Leijon, Founder & President of ROYC, offers insight into what the deal involves, why it matters, and where ROYC is headed — not just with G Squared, but for Europe more broadly.

What ROYC & G Squared Bring to the Table

ROYC is a European fintech / alternative markets infrastructure company, positioning itself as an "investment operating system" for the private markets. Its platform aims to simplify the complexity faced by general partners (GPs) and private wealth distributors: structuring funds, onboarding investors, handling compliance, managing reporting, and generally automating and providing digital tools for what is usually slow, service-heavy, fragmented work.

The leadership of ROYC comes with serious private markets and banking chops. Leijon himself has over 25 years in investment and finance, including senior roles at Nordea. His co-founders (Octavian Popescu and Oscar von Reis) are veterans of Blackstone with deep experience in large scale private markets investing.

ROYC’s platform is used in some 30+ countries, and supports both closed-end and evergreen funds, various European legal fund forms, cross-border distribution, white-label investor portals, digital subscriptions, KYC/AML automation and so on.

G Squared, for its part, is a well-established global venture capital firm, founded in 2011, with headquarters in Chicago and offices in San Francisco, Miami and Zurich. The firm invests in growth stage tech companies across North America and Europe, including in both primary financings and secondaries, and also structures employee tenders. Among its portfolio are high-profile names like Airbnb, Bolt, Coursera, Instacart, Lyft, Spotify, Toast, Turo, plus fast rising disruptors such as Brex, PandaDoc, Tipalti, and Wiz, among others.

G Squared’s thesis reflects a fundamental shift in how long companies stay private. Because high-growth companies are remaining private longer, both primary capital (for growth) and “transition capital” (to provide liquidity to earlier investors, employees, etc.) are increasingly important. Thus, the ability to manage both these types, as well as secondaries and tenders, is central to G Squared’s strategy.

What the Partnership Entails

According to Leijon, this is not a narrow cooperation: ROYC is providing G Squared with its full stack platform in Europe. That means everything from digital onboarding, execution, reporting, portfolio management, to compliance infrastructure. In Leijon’s words: “we’re their operating system and structuring partner on the ground.”

Other parts of ROYC’s model that become operative in this partnership include structuring bespoke feeder funds, LP (limited partner) onboarding (including KYC/AML), cross-border regulatory clearance, investor portals under G Squared’s branding, etc. Leijon emphasises ROYC combines structuring, compliance, and technology into “one scalable package under the GP’s brand.”

This arrangement is significant: G Squared gets infrastructure that allows it to operate more smoothly in Europe, particularly in a regulatory environment that is fragmented, and where investor onboarding and cross-border distribution are often slow and complex.

Why It’s a Good Fit

Mathias Leijon frames the fit this way: G Squared is “tech-native”, a venture firm with global reach. ROYC is “tech-first”, built to simplify private markets, with a vision of the investor experience being digital, scalable, friction-free. The partnership gives ROYC validation: working with one of the more innovative VCs signals that its model works. And for G Squared, it gets a partner who can deploy infrastructure and compliance on the ground in Europe, thereby speeding up processes and reducing friction.

Moreover, this deal is not isolated. Leijon points to previous or existing partnerships with Riverside and Ardian, and confirms that more relationships are underway, though not yet publicly disclosed. This signals that ROYC sees its business model as scalable across multiple GPs and private equity / venture firms.

Challenges in Europe, and How ROYC Helps

One of the core factors that ROYC highlights is Europe’s regulatory, legal, and operational fragmentation. Different jurisdictions have different fund regimes, differing rules for distribution, diverging investor onboarding requirements, and cross-border rules that complicate things. For a GP based outside certain countries, or trying to distribute across several, the complexity of dealing with multiple legal and regulatory regimes, varying investor requirements, and compliance overhead can be large.

ROYC seeks to solve that by offering structuring support, regulatory clearance, investor onboarding, compliance infrastructure, and cross-border distribution as part of the package. Thus, GPs like G Squared can focus on deal sourcing, portfolio company value creation, etc., rather than wrestling with the infrastructure and administrative burden of entering Europe deeply.

How ROYC Differs from Traditional Fund Admin & Back-Office

Leijon draws a clear distinction. Traditional providers: slow, service-heavy, siloed. They often focus on manual interactions, paper subscriptions, lengthy processes. ROYC’s model is different:

• Digital subscriptions, automated KYC/AML
• Unified dashboards for fundraising, monitoring, investors, capital calls, distributions
• White-label investor portals so that GPs can retain their branding and client interface
• Structuring and compliance built in, not bolted on

In short, ROYC positions itself not merely as an administrator, but the platform or operating system for private markets, combining tech, compliance, structuring into one scalable offering.

The Strategic Significance & Growth Trajectory

For ROYC, the G Squared partnership is more than just adding another client. It is a signal: “if G Squared trusts us to be their operating system in Europe, then others will follow.” It helps validate the ROYC model and accelerates their pace of business—and potentially their scale in terms of assets under management they support, number of GPs, jurisdictions covered, etc.

Leijon mentions that ROYC expects to expand its role especially in private wealth distribution at scale. That is: enabling GPs to raise from banks, private banks, wealth managers, family offices across Europe within weeks rather than months. This suggests a future in which ROYC not only helps set up funds and perform admin, but becomes a central conduit for connecting GPs with European private wealth investors in a streamlined, compliant way.

Also implied is that ROYC’s infrastructure may evolve further: better investor portals, potentially more automation, broader legal structuring (e.g. for different fund types, different jurisdictions), possibly even more solutions around digital distribution.

First Milestones & Confidentiality

When asked about specific milestones for the next 12-18 months, Leijon declined to share details citing confidentiality. But given the nature of what they are putting in place, one can reasonably expect:

• Deployment of ROYC’s full platform for G Squared in one or more European jurisdictions
• Onboarding of European LPs under feeder fund or similar structures
• Setting up investor portals under G Squared’s brand, etc.
• Regulatory clearances, cross-border licensing, or distribution approvals, where required

Broader Implications

This deal speaks to two larger trends:

1. Infrastructure matters. As private markets continue to grow, especially in venture and growth stage, the back-office, regulatory, structuring, and technological infrastructure becomes a competitive differentiator. It’s no longer enough to pick good deals — deploying, servicing, distributing, reporting, complying, etc., must also be efficient and tech enabled.
2. Europe is catching up (or needs to). Historically, U.S. venture firms have had relatively simpler infrastructure to reach institutional and private wealth investors. In Europe, the fragmentation of regulation, fund forms, and investor protection / onboarding rules is a well-known hurdle. For VCs to scale across European private wealth, they need partners and platforms that can navigate those complexities.

 ROYC has made clear this is not a one-off anchor deal. Its model is built to support multiple leading managers (GPs) in Europe. Having completed or made public earlier deals (e.g. Riverside, Ardian), ROYC appears to be in scaling mode. The G Squared partnership is likely to become a benchmark or reference for what ROYC can deliver globally.

For G Squared, this opens up smoother access to European LPs and private wealth networks, less overhead, faster deployment. It will be interesting to see how much of fund raising, secondary or tender deals, and investor servicing can be accelerated.

In the longer term, ROYC could evolve deeper features — stronger analytics, AI-driven investor insights, deeper integration with banks and wealth managers, standardized but flexible fund structures suited to many jurisdictions, possibly even moving into tools for performance benchmarking across funds, for example.

Conclusion

ROYC’s full-stack platform partnership with G Squared is a potent case study in how one company built for scale and technology meets a growth-stage VC firm that needs to streamline European operations. Leijon’s quotes make clear the collaboration is more than infrastructure: it’s about re-imagining the investor experience in private markets, reducing friction, and accelerating access.

This is an example of the “plumbing” of private markets maturing — not glamorous perhaps, but increasingly essential. If ROYC succeeds, this partnership could be a bellwether for how venture and private equity firms (especially U.S. or global ones) will organize their expansion into Europe over the next few years.

ROYC Powers Up in Europe via Full-Stack Partnership with G Squared

In a move that underscores the growing importance of infrastructure in the private markets, ROYC has announced a strategic, full-stack partnership with G Squared. Mathias Leijon, Founder & President of ROYC, offers insight into what the deal involves, why it matters, and where ROYC is headed — not just with G Squared, but for Europe more broadly.

What ROYC & G Squared Bring to the Table

ROYC is a European fintech / alternative markets infrastructure company, positioning itself as an "investment operating system" for the private markets. Its platform aims to simplify the complexity faced by general partners (GPs) and private wealth distributors: structuring funds, onboarding investors, handling compliance, managing reporting, and generally automating and providing digital tools for what is usually slow, service-heavy, fragmented work.

The leadership of ROYC comes with serious private markets and banking chops. Leijon himself has over 25 years in investment and finance, including senior roles at Nordea. His co-founders (Octavian Popescu and Oscar von Reis) are veterans of Blackstone with deep experience in large scale private markets investing.

ROYC’s platform is used in some 30+ countries, and supports both closed-end and evergreen funds, various European legal fund forms, cross-border distribution, white-label investor portals, digital subscriptions, KYC/AML automation and so on.

G Squared, for its part, is a well-established global venture capital firm, founded in 2011, with headquarters in Chicago and offices in San Francisco, Miami and Zurich. The firm invests in growth stage tech companies across North America and Europe, including in both primary financings and secondaries, and also structures employee tenders. Among its portfolio are high-profile names like Airbnb, Bolt, Coursera, Instacart, Lyft, Spotify, Toast, Turo, plus fast rising disruptors such as Brex, PandaDoc, Tipalti, and Wiz, among others.

G Squared’s thesis reflects a fundamental shift in how long companies stay private. Because high-growth companies are remaining private longer, both primary capital (for growth) and “transition capital” (to provide liquidity to earlier investors, employees, etc.) are increasingly important. Thus, the ability to manage both these types, as well as secondaries and tenders, is central to G Squared’s strategy.

What the Partnership Entails

According to Leijon, this is not a narrow cooperation: ROYC is providing G Squared with its full stack platform in Europe. That means everything from digital onboarding, execution, reporting, portfolio management, to compliance infrastructure. In Leijon’s words: “we’re their operating system and structuring partner on the ground.”

Other parts of ROYC’s model that become operative in this partnership include structuring bespoke feeder funds, LP (limited partner) onboarding (including KYC/AML), cross-border regulatory clearance, investor portals under G Squared’s branding, etc. Leijon emphasises ROYC combines structuring, compliance, and technology into “one scalable package under the GP’s brand.”

This arrangement is significant: G Squared gets infrastructure that allows it to operate more smoothly in Europe, particularly in a regulatory environment that is fragmented, and where investor onboarding and cross-border distribution are often slow and complex.

Why It’s a Good Fit

Mathias Leijon frames the fit this way: G Squared is “tech-native”, a venture firm with global reach. ROYC is “tech-first”, built to simplify private markets, with a vision of the investor experience being digital, scalable, friction-free. The partnership gives ROYC validation: working with one of the more innovative VCs signals that its model works. And for G Squared, it gets a partner who can deploy infrastructure and compliance on the ground in Europe, thereby speeding up processes and reducing friction.

Moreover, this deal is not isolated. Leijon points to previous or existing partnerships with Riverside and Ardian, and confirms that more relationships are underway, though not yet publicly disclosed. This signals that ROYC sees its business model as scalable across multiple GPs and private equity / venture firms.

Challenges in Europe, and How ROYC Helps

One of the core factors that ROYC highlights is Europe’s regulatory, legal, and operational fragmentation. Different jurisdictions have different fund regimes, differing rules for distribution, diverging investor onboarding requirements, and cross-border rules that complicate things. For a GP based outside certain countries, or trying to distribute across several, the complexity of dealing with multiple legal and regulatory regimes, varying investor requirements, and compliance overhead can be large.

ROYC seeks to solve that by offering structuring support, regulatory clearance, investor onboarding, compliance infrastructure, and cross-border distribution as part of the package. Thus, GPs like G Squared can focus on deal sourcing, portfolio company value creation, etc., rather than wrestling with the infrastructure and administrative burden of entering Europe deeply.

How ROYC Differs from Traditional Fund Admin & Back-Office

Leijon draws a clear distinction. Traditional providers: slow, service-heavy, siloed. They often focus on manual interactions, paper subscriptions, lengthy processes. ROYC’s model is different:

• Digital subscriptions, automated KYC/AML
• Unified dashboards for fundraising, monitoring, investors, capital calls, distributions
• White-label investor portals so that GPs can retain their branding and client interface
• Structuring and compliance built in, not bolted on

In short, ROYC positions itself not merely as an administrator, but the platform or operating system for private markets, combining tech, compliance, structuring into one scalable offering.

The Strategic Significance & Growth Trajectory

For ROYC, the G Squared partnership is more than just adding another client. It is a signal: “if G Squared trusts us to be their operating system in Europe, then others will follow.” It helps validate the ROYC model and accelerates their pace of business—and potentially their scale in terms of assets under management they support, number of GPs, jurisdictions covered, etc.

Leijon mentions that ROYC expects to expand its role especially in private wealth distribution at scale. That is: enabling GPs to raise from banks, private banks, wealth managers, family offices across Europe within weeks rather than months. This suggests a future in which ROYC not only helps set up funds and perform admin, but becomes a central conduit for connecting GPs with European private wealth investors in a streamlined, compliant way.

Also implied is that ROYC’s infrastructure may evolve further: better investor portals, potentially more automation, broader legal structuring (e.g. for different fund types, different jurisdictions), possibly even more solutions around digital distribution.

First Milestones & Confidentiality

When asked about specific milestones for the next 12-18 months, Leijon declined to share details citing confidentiality. But given the nature of what they are putting in place, one can reasonably expect:

• Deployment of ROYC’s full platform for G Squared in one or more European jurisdictions
• Onboarding of European LPs under feeder fund or similar structures
• Setting up investor portals under G Squared’s brand, etc.
• Regulatory clearances, cross-border licensing, or distribution approvals, where required

Broader Implications

This deal speaks to two larger trends:

1. Infrastructure matters. As private markets continue to grow, especially in venture and growth stage, the back-office, regulatory, structuring, and technological infrastructure becomes a competitive differentiator. It’s no longer enough to pick good deals — deploying, servicing, distributing, reporting, complying, etc., must also be efficient and tech enabled.
2. Europe is catching up (or needs to). Historically, U.S. venture firms have had relatively simpler infrastructure to reach institutional and private wealth investors. In Europe, the fragmentation of regulation, fund forms, and investor protection / onboarding rules is a well-known hurdle. For VCs to scale across European private wealth, they need partners and platforms that can navigate those complexities.

 ROYC has made clear this is not a one-off anchor deal. Its model is built to support multiple leading managers (GPs) in Europe. Having completed or made public earlier deals (e.g. Riverside, Ardian), ROYC appears to be in scaling mode. The G Squared partnership is likely to become a benchmark or reference for what ROYC can deliver globally.

For G Squared, this opens up smoother access to European LPs and private wealth networks, less overhead, faster deployment. It will be interesting to see how much of fund raising, secondary or tender deals, and investor servicing can be accelerated.

In the longer term, ROYC could evolve deeper features — stronger analytics, AI-driven investor insights, deeper integration with banks and wealth managers, standardized but flexible fund structures suited to many jurisdictions, possibly even moving into tools for performance benchmarking across funds, for example.

Conclusion

ROYC’s full-stack platform partnership with G Squared is a potent case study in how one company built for scale and technology meets a growth-stage VC firm that needs to streamline European operations. Leijon’s quotes make clear the collaboration is more than infrastructure: it’s about re-imagining the investor experience in private markets, reducing friction, and accelerating access.

This is an example of the “plumbing” of private markets maturing — not glamorous perhaps, but increasingly essential. If ROYC succeeds, this partnership could be a bellwether for how venture and private equity firms (especially U.S. or global ones) will organize their expansion into Europe over the next few years.