Munich-based venture capital firm Vanagon Ventures, which backs pre-seed AI and deeptech founders rebuilding traditional industries with long-term, non-SaaS business models, has announced the first close of its €20 million Fund I, backed by Allocator One.
- Vanagon Ventures, founded in 2023 by Sandro Stark, Susanne Fromm, and Axel Roitzsch, is a pre-seed and seed venture capital firm that backs AI-native and DeepTech founders in Industrial, Nature, and Digital Infrastructure.
- The new €20 million Fund I acts as the first institutional or lead investor in pre-seed AI and DeepTech companies across Europe, with a plan to build a portfolio of around 30 companies.
- It has already invested in Holy Technologies (autonomous factories), ExoMatter (AI and quantum-powered materials R&D), and The Landbanking Group (natural capital), alongside other ventures in glass-based data storage, AI-powered visual inspection, and AI-driven demand forecasting.
- The fund provides up to €500,000 per company and hands-on support in round structuring, go-to-market strategy, and customer access, aiming to back category-defining founders who can reshape industries, strengthen Europe’s technological sovereignty, and unlock the €3 trillion DeepTech opportunity.
"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," claims Susanne Fromm, General Partner at Vanagon Ventures.
- The new €20 million fund was supported by Allocator One as the anchor investor, with additional backing from family offices, high‑net‑worth individuals, senior tech executives including from Apple and Google, and unicorn founders from the Munich ecosystem, and was structured with help from Orbit, Bird & Bird, and ACE Alternatives.
