Bringing home the point that the venture cycle is maturing with later-stage deals sucking up more and more capital, London- and Geneva-based Index Ventures is launching a $577 million (400 million Euro) growth fund. It will invest in later-stage deals requiring $30 to $70 million each, and will focus mostly on European companies, including biotech.

This is a departure for Index, whose current fund (index Ventures IV) has done extremely well investing in seed and early-stage deals, including Skype, MySQL, and Last.fm. The new fund, which is called Index Ventures Growth I, will be managed by Index co-founder Giuseppe Zocco; Dominique Vidal, previously CEO of Yahoo! Europe and co-founder of Kelkoo; and Guido Magni, formerly the Global Head of Medical Science, Pharmaceutical Division, F. Hoffman-La Roche Ltd. Basel, Switzerland.