While Europe’s capital pours into SaaS and consumer software, early-stage founders building complex technologies in AI, quantum, or robotics struggle to find investors willing to take the first risk. Vanagon Ventures, a Munich-based venture capital firm, has stepped in to change that.
The firm announced the final close of its €20 million Fund I, created specifically for deep tech and AI startups at the pre-seed and seed stages. Vanagon plans to invest up to €500,000 per company in founders tackling large-scale industrial and technological challenges, from sustainable manufacturing to next-generation materials and automated systems.
The fund has already backed several early-stage companies, including Holy Technologies, which uses AI to transform component manufacturing; ExoMatter, a material discovery platform spun out of the German Aerospace Centre; and The Landbanking Group, which helps organisations measure and monetise natural capital.
Sandro Stark, General Partner at Vanagon Ventures, shares with TFN, “For every investment, we look for top-tier professionals with a farsighted technological vision. Especially founders with deep domain expertise and a clear intuition for how technology will reshape their market, and the ability to continuously balance what is technically possible with what the market truly needs.”
He continues, “And we often do this before the story is neat. Before the numbers look comforting. What we look for is something very hard to fake: obsession with a problem, resilience under pressure, and the kind of potential that compounds over time.”
Investing in deep domain experts reimagining old industries through new technologies
Vanagon Ventures was built on a simple conviction: the next wave of transformative technology companies will emerge from founders who understand the systems they aim to rebuild.
The firm’s three general partners bring decades of combined experience across entrepreneurship, corporate innovation, and venture building. Axel Roitzsch is a serial entrepreneur who has taken companies through full growth cycles. Sandro Stark, formerly a strategist at Microsoft, also co-founded a parametric climate insurance startup. Susanne Fromm, an INSEAD MBA, spent over 15 years working in corporate innovation and technology investing before co-founding Vanagon.
What sets Vanagon apart is its commitment to conviction-led investing at the pre-seed stage. While many funds claim to invest early, few do so until clear traction is evident. Vanagon operates differently: it leads rounds, mobilises its network for follow-on capital, and provides hands-on operational help rather than passive capital.
Within Europe’s deep-tech ecosystem, competitors such as Vsquared Ventures, Earlybird, and Lakestar also back cutting-edge science and engineering ventures. However, Vanagon’s niche lies in its first-round investments in underfunded, industrial and AI-heavy startups — an area where conviction and expertise matter more than scale.
Is there a diversity strategy?
When we ask about the diversity strategy, Stark comments: “Many VCs fund what feels familiar. All our founding partners come from non-legacy VC backgrounds and have built companies and driven innovation within companies and corporates themselves. That experience shapes a broader perspective on talent and risk, and allows us to support founders more practically as they scale into the next phase.
As a result, our founder portfolio is very diverse – in terms of origin, educational & experience background, gender and life stage.
For instance, we have backed parents and founders building companies alongside major personal responsibilities. While often framed as additional risk, these situations can be strong indicators of prioritisation, trustworthiness, and long-term orientation — when paired with ambition and execution strength.”
What’s next?
Vanagon’s Fund I expects to invest in about thirty startups, each driving critical advances that strengthen Europe’s technological independence and ecological resilience.
Stark concludes, “We continue our strategy on finding and backing exceptional founders and work closely with them in moving their companies up the curve. We do that by connecting them with our “Deepdrive Network” of Founders, Tech Execs and our Corporate network we’ve built during years at Microsoft, Allianz, Roland Berger or INSEAD. That we can help our founders raise more, faster and sharper.”
