If US investor sentiment is anything to go by, Europe is spawning a healthy crop of new entrepreneurs. Certainly, European venture capital investment saw renewed interest by US investors last year, highlighted by several high profile Sequoia Capital investments (such as JaJah and Stardoll) and also the appearance of hedge funds in a number of venture funding rounds.

Tudor Investment Corporation, led by one of the savviest investors of all-time, Paul Tudor Jones, is particularly active at the moment, VentureBlog has learnt. The Boston-based hedge fund is just about to announce a £5m (€7.6m) investment in Alertme.com, a developer of a consumer product package described as "Home Security 2.0". Alertme, which has only just come out of stealth mode, was co-founded by Adrian Critchlow, co-founder of Active Hotel, which was sold to Priceline.com in 2004.

The investment will be the hedge fund’s fifth European investment since July last year, all of which have been in the UK. The others are Plastic Logic (December 2006), Passado (December 2006), Netronome (November 2006) and Hotxt (July 2006).

Top class investors are welcomed by all venture-backed companies, but does that welcome extend to all hedge funds? I'd need some convincing on that one.