- Merantix Capital has closed a €103 million AI Fund to back around 40 early-stage AI-native startups across Europe.
- The fund targets AI companies embedded in logistics, manufacturing, healthcare, energy, robotics, and enterprise software.
- LPs include Union Investment, Jungheinrich, KPMG Germany, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation — a mix of corporates, foundations, and institutional investors that gives portfolio companies direct access to potential enterprise customers.
For years, Europe’s AI debate has centred on a familiar question: how can the continent convert its world-class research and industrial expertise into globally competitive technology companies? Berlin-based Merantix Capital believes the answer lies not in building more models, but in backing founders who understand industries as deeply as they understand artificial intelligence.
The firm has closed a €103 million AI Fund, attracting backing from a mix of corporates, foundations, family offices, and institutional investors. Limited partners include Union Investment, Jungheinrich, KPMG Germany, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The fund will invest in approximately 40 early-stage AI-native companies across logistics, manufacturing, energy, finance, healthcare, life sciences, robotics, enterprise software, and physical AI. The €103 million close marks Merantix’s largest fund to date – nearly three times the size of its 2020 €35 million vehicle – reflecting both the firm’s growth and the accelerating appetite for dedicated industrial AI capital in Europe. With investors based in Berlin and London, Merantix plans to back founders across Europe.
Building Europe’s next generation of AI companies
Merantix was founded in 2016 by Adrian Locher and Dr. Rasmus Rothe. Locher previously built and exited Swiss marketplace DeinDeal – acquired by the Ringier Group – and has since helped build and scale more than 20 companies across Europe. Rothe holds a PhD in computer vision and deep learning from ETH Zurich, studied at Oxford and Princeton, and serves as chairman of Germany’s AI Association, the KI Bundesverband. The leadership team is expanding alongside the new fund: Nicole Büttner, previously the founder and CEO of Merantix Momentum and a founding partner of Merantix Capital, is joining the investment team full-time.
A thesis built around industrial transformation
Merantix Capital’s core conviction is that AI’s biggest winners will not necessarily be the companies building models, but those embedding AI directly into critical workflows across large industries. As TFN has reported, European AI startups raised $45.8 billion in 2025 — a record — but according to Atomico’s State of European Tech, Europe still captures only 10% of global exit value despite generating 17% of new global enterprise value. Merantix’s bet is that industrial AI, not consumer applications, is where Europe can close that gap.
The new fund is split evenly between supporting founders emerging from the Merantix venture studio ecosystem and direct investments into pre-seed and seed-stage startups across Europe. The venture studio model, validated through the firm’s first fund, helped launch companies including Droidrun (mobile-native AI agent infrastructure, winner of the 2026 German Startup Award for Newcomer of the Year), Arqh (AI logistics optimisation), and Outpost Bio (AI applied to human microbiology), alongside earlier portfolio companies revel8, Deltia, Vara, and Cambrium.
More than a venture fund
What differentiates Merantix from many traditional venture firms is the ecosystem built around founders. Strategic LPs — including Jungheinrich, which invested €5 million specifically as part of a broader AI partnership, and KPMG Germany, which entered a strategic partnership with Merantix in December 2024 — can provide portfolio companies with early customers, pilot projects, industry expertise, and commercial partnerships from day one. Founders backed by the firm also gain access to the Merantix AI Campus in Berlin, Europe’s largest AI community with more than 80 resident companies and 300 annual events, the London AI Hub, AI House Davos, and Merantix Momentum, the group’s AI transformation business with 70+ AI engineers running 100+ enterprise projects per year.
“Europe’s industrial heritage and world-class research base positions us to produce true AI champions. What we have lacked is the connective tissue between industry and the startups reimagining industries through AI and machine learning. Pick your metaphor: We’re building the glue, the connective tissue, or the bridge that Europe needs.” — Dr. Rasmus Rothe, Co-Founder and General Partner, Merantix Capital.
“Our unfair advantage lies in our ability to deliver the two things that early-stage teams need most, and often find the hardest to find: talent and traction.” — Adrian Locher, Co-Founder and General Partner, Merantix Capital.
The competitive landscape
Merantix Capital operates in an increasingly competitive European AI investment landscape. Atomico, Europe’s largest dedicated tech VC with $4.7 billion in AUM, focuses on post-Series A companies, leaving the pre-seed and seed stage less contested for specialist firms. HTGF, Germany’s most active early-stage investor with around 350 active portfolio companies, takes a broader sector approach. Merantix differentiates by combining a venture studio, a corporate LP network, and an on-the-ground industrial AI community, a structure that makes it harder for a generalist fund to replicate quickly.
Market context
According to Grand View Research, the global AI market was valued at $390.91 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $3.5 trillion by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 30.6%. Within that, industrial AI applications – Merantix’s core focus – are among the fastest-growing segments, driven by manufacturing, logistics, and energy sectors investing heavily in AI-driven operational efficiency.
In the context of German VC fundraising, Earlybird closed the largest German fund of 2026 so far at €360 million in April, a sector-agnostic vehicle spanning AI, deeptech, and infrastructure. Merantix’s latest fund stands out as one of the largest dedicated early-stage industrial AI funds raised in Germany this year, backed entirely by strategic corporate and institutional LPs rather than government capital.
The bigger question Merantix forces Europe’s AI ecosystem to confront is not whether industrial AI will produce champions. The question is whether European VCs can move fast enough and stay independent enough before the US mega-funds already expanding into Europe decide this particular industrial thesis is worth owning themselves.
