Vanagon Ventures, a German deeptech venture capital firm, has reached the final close
of its €20 million Fund I. The fund is backed by Allocator One, alongside
additional limited partners including family offices and high-net-worth
individuals, senior technology executives from companies such as Apple and
Google, and unicorn founders from the Munich ecosystem. Vanagon Ventures is
further supported by the law firms Orbit and Bird & Bird and fund
administrator ACE Alternatives.
Based
in Munich, the fund focuses on backing B2B startups at the pre-seed stage that
address system-level challenges and develop new categories enabled by AI and
deeptech. Vanagon Ventures was established to support companies that follow
development paths beyond traditional software-as-a-service models, targeting
founders with deep domain expertise in established industries who apply
advanced technologies to re-architect these systems from the ground up.
The
strategy addresses a gap in early-stage venture capital, particularly at the
pre-seed level, where AI-native and deeptech companies with significant
long-term economic potential often require different scaling approaches than
conventional software businesses.
Vanagon typically invests up to €500,000
initially in teams developing technologies that contribute to Europe’s
sovereignty and sustainability, with a focus on areas such as spatial and
artificial intelligence, quantum computing, robotics, and frontier software
addressing large, long-term markets.
AI changes everything – also VC investing: the steepest value creation is
shifting to the earliest stages, our sweet spot. Yet many VCs shy away from
pre-seed as they still rely on SaaS playbooks that don’t fit the scaling logic
of DeepTech and AI-native disruption in B2B,
said
Susanne Fromm, General Partner at Vanagon Ventures.
Vanagon
Ventures is managed by three General Partners, Axel Roitzsch, Sandro Stark, and
Susanne Fromm, who bring combined experience in venture investing and
technology-driven transformation across multiple industries.
The fund
frequently acts as a first institutional or lead investor, supporting portfolio
companies with follow-on fundraising through its network and providing hands-on
support in areas such as round structuring, go-to-market strategy, and customer
access.
Fund I
is targeting a portfolio of approximately 30 companies and has already invested
in several early-stage businesses positioned as category builders, including Holy Technologies, ExoMatter, and The Landbanking Group.
Additional
investments span areas such as glass-based data storage for long-term,
sustainable archiving, AI-powered visual inspection for manufacturing quality
control, and AI-driven demand forecasting for the chemical and textile
industries.