German VC Merantix Capital closes €103 million fund for early-stage AI startups

Berlin-based Merantix Capital today announced the closing of its €103 million AI Fund, which will invest in early-stage, AI-native companies across logistics, manufacturing, energy, finance, healthcare, life sciences, robotics, enterprise and physical AI.

The fund will make approximately 40 investements across European AI, with strategic LPs including Union Investment, Jungheinrich, KPMG Germany, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

“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 stratups reimagining industries through AI and machine learning. Pick your metaphor: We’re building the glue, the connective tissue, or the bridge that Europe needs,” says Dr. Rasmus Rothe, co-founder and GP of Merantix Capital.

Merantix Capital’s AI Fund lands in a crowded 2026 European VC market where EU-Startups has reported several specialist funds targeting AI-native companies, DeepTech, industrial systems and the physical-world infrastructure around AI.

The closest comparables include Transition Ventures’ €128 million Fund II, Samaipata’s €110 million AI-native Fund III target, DFF Ventures’ €70 million fund for software and AI in underdigitised industries, and Germany-based Vanagon Ventures’ €20 million pre-Seed DeepTech and AI fund.

EU-Startups has also covered Merantix Capital itself in 2026 as co-lead investor in OutPost Bio’s €2.9 million pre-Seed round.

“Our unfair advantage lies in our ability to deliver the two things that early-stage teams need most, and often the hardest to find: talent and traction,” adds Adrian Locher, co-founder and GP of Merantix Capital.

Founded in 2016, Merantix Capital forms part of the wider Merantix group and is an early-stage VC firm working to bring AI into real-world applications in sectors ranging from healthcare to manufacturing to life sciences and enterprise.

Locher and Rothe co-founded Merantix together in 2016. Locher is a serial entrepreneur and investor who has helped build and scale more than 20 companies across Europe. He studied quantitative economics and business administration at the University of St. Gallen and previously founded and scaled Swiss marketplace DeinDeal before its acquisition by the Ringier Group.

Rothe holds a PhD in computer vision and deep learning from ETH Zurich and studied computer science at Oxford, Princeton, and ETH. He is a founding board member and the current chairman of the board of the German Al Association (KI Bundesverband).

Nicole Büttner, previously the Founder and CEO of Merantix Momentum and founding partner of Merantix Capital, is joining the Capital team fulltime as part of the new fund.

This new fund builds on the strategy of their first fund, which was solely focused on venture studio incubations and includes companies such as revel8, Deltia, Vara and Cambrium.

The fund is split 50-50 between backing venture studio founders who work with the Merantix team to create new AI companies and validate their ideas through an extensive ecosystem, in addition to direct investments at the pre-Seed and Seed stages.

Merantix is actively deploying from the new fund, with investments including Droidrun (mobile-native Al agent infrastructure), Arqh (Al logistics optimization), Outpost Bio (Al for human microbiology), and several other stealth ventures across logistics, manufacturing, recruiting, ERP, energy, and fashion tech.

The VC says they want to build the bridge between Europe’s leading corporates and the most ambitious Al teams on the continent.

Particularly for corporate partners, the investment is part of a broader collaboration with the Merantix Group around Al transformation, including access to early-stage Al companies, selected pilot and partnership opportunities, and the integration into the Merantix ecosystem.

Merantix Capital founders gain immediate access to design partners, early customers, and Al engineering talent through their Al community, anchored at the Merantix Al Campus (80+ resident companies, 300 events per year), the London Al Hub, Al House Davos, and Merantix Momentum, an Al solutions provider leading Al transformations with 70+ Al engineers running 100+ enterprise projects per year.

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