Munich-based Vanagon Ventures has announced the final close of its €20 million Fund I, marking a focused push to back Europe’s next generation of DeepTech and AI startups at the pre-Seed stage. The fund is designed to support B2B founders tackling fundamental, system-level challenges and building entirely new categories that sit beyond traditional SaaS models.
The fund is backed by Allocator One, alongside a group of family offices, high-net-worth individuals, and senior technology executives from global companies including Apple and Google. Vanagon’s approach reflects growing investor recognition that the most transformative value creation in AI and DeepTech is increasingly happening at the very earliest stages.
A pre-Seed fund built for DeepTech and AI-native founders
Founded in 2023, Vanagon Ventures was created around the belief that Europe’s strongest technology companies will not emerge from standard venture playbooks. Instead, the firm focuses on founders with deep domain expertise in established industries who use advanced technologies to rethink entire systems from the ground up.
Vanagon typically writes initial cheques of up to €500,000 and aims to support teams from day one. The fund targets around 30 portfolio companies, concentrating on areas that are strategically important for Europe’s long-term sovereignty and sustainability.
Key investment themes include spatial and artificial intelligence, quantum computing, robotics, frontier software, and other technologies that underpin industrial and societal transformation.
“Most early-stage funds aren’t built for pre-Seed. They talk conviction but wait for proof. We built Vanagon to back relentless founders on their life’s mission from day one,” said Sandro Stark, General Partner at Vanagon Ventures.
Closing Fund I amid strong European DeepTech momentum
Vanagon’s €20 million close comes against a backdrop of sustained early-stage activity in AI and DeepTech across Europe throughout 2025 and early 2026.
In Germany, U2V, a spin-out from Earlybird-X, launched a €60 million fund focused on pre-Seed and Seed DeepTech startups emerging from European technical universities. Munich has also seen startup-level momentum, with local company yasp raising €4.2 million to develop its agentic AI compiler.
Beyond Germany, Paris-based Arago secured €22.1 million to build photonic chips aimed at reducing the energy consumption of AI workloads, while Munich-based Ananda Impact Ventures announced a €73 million first close for its impact and DeepTech-focused fund.
Taken together, these disclosed fundraises represent roughly €160 million flowing into AI and DeepTech-related activity in Europe during this period, highlighting a broader shift towards earlier-stage capital deployment in foundational technologies.
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Addressing the pre-Seed funding gap in Europe
According to Vanagon’s partners, many venture firms remain hesitant at the pre-Seed stage, particularly when faced with DeepTech and AI-native business models that do not follow familiar SaaS scaling dynamics.
“AI changes everything, including how venture capital needs to work,” said Susanne Fromm, General Partner at Vanagon Ventures. “The steepest value creation is shifting to the earliest stages, yet many investors still rely on SaaS playbooks that simply do not fit DeepTech and AI-native B2B disruption.”
Vanagon positions its fund as a response to this structural gap, offering capital and conviction at a stage where technical risk is high but long-term economic impact can be significant.
The team behind Vanagon Ventures
Vanagon Ventures is led by three General Partners with backgrounds spanning entrepreneurship, technology strategy, and corporate innovation.
Axel Roitzsch is a serial entrepreneur with full-cycle experience building and scaling companies. Sandro Stark previously worked as a strategist at Microsoft and co-founded a parametric climate insurance company. Susanne Fromm holds an INSEAD MBA and brings over 15 years of experience across corporate strategy, innovation, and technology investment.
“DeepTech has long been a European strength and is now becoming central to sovereignty and the next wave of innovation,” said Roitzsch. “Venture capital is the fastest way to turn that innovation into economic power.”
Early investments reflect fund’s thesis
Fund I has already made several investments that reflect Vanagon’s focus on foundational technologies and long-term impact.
Portfolio companies include Holy Technologies, an AI-enabled engineering company rethinking how high-performance components are manufactured in Europe, and ExoMatter, a spin-out from the German Aerospace Center that provides AI-powered R&D tools to large industrial customers.
Another investment, The Landbanking Group, is developing an AI-driven platform that enables companies to measure, manage, and monetise natural capital, supporting biodiversity and ecosystem integrity as a new asset class.
Additional investments span areas such as glass-based data storage for immutable and sustainable archiving, AI-powered visual inspection for zero-defect manufacturing, and demand forecasting solutions for the chemical and textile industries.
With Fund I now fully closed, Vanagon Ventures is positioning itself as a dedicated early partner for Europe’s most ambitious DeepTech and AI founders, targeting the pre-Seed gap many believe is holding back the continent’s next wave of transformative technology companies.