Merantix Capital has closed a €103m fund to invest in early-stage, AI-native teams across Europe, the Berlin firm announced on 4 June. The fund is more than three times the size of its first vehicle, which co-founders Rasmus Rothe and Adrian Locher raised at roughly €30m, and it widens the firm’s remit from companies built in-house to startups founded anywhere on the continent.
The structure is the distinctive part. The fund is split evenly: half its capital goes to founders who work with the Merantix team from the “pre-idea” stage, validating concepts through the firm’s ecosystem and building at the Merantix AI Campus in Berlin, and the other half goes to direct investments in pre-seed and seed-stage companies.
The firm plans around 40 investments in total, with cheques running from about €1m to €3m, and investment teams based in Berlin and London writing across Europe.
The thesis is industry-specific rather than horizontal. Merantix is targeting teams applying AI to the sectors where it says Europe’s strength lies, naming logistics, manufacturing, energy, finance, healthcare, life sciences, robotics, enterprise software, and physical AI.
The framing the founders use is “connective tissue,” the gap between Europe’s industrial base and the startups trying to rebuild those industries with machine learning, which is the gap they say the fund exists to close.The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
