Cleo Ventures is a Paris-based AI-specialist venture capital firm founded in 2025 by Antoine Veret and Maxime Le Dantec. The firm invests exclusively in AI-native companies at pre-seed and seed across Europe, often before product or team exists. Cleo is the successor to Resonance, a predecessor angel-investing vehicle through which the founders built a track record including MatX, Fintool (acquired by Microsoft), DeepIP, Animaj, Lightdash, GitGuardian, and Alice & Bob. With Fund II, Cleo has established itself as one of the highest-conviction AI-only early-stage funds in Europe.
Cleo invests exclusively in AI-native companies across four categories: AI applications (consumer and enterprise), AI infrastructure, frontier labs, and AI-adjacent deep tech. The firm's thesis is that AI-native company building is sufficiently distinct from traditional SaaS to warrant dedicated specialist capital, and that a $34M fund writing $300K–$1M first checks is structurally positioned to invest at the pre-product, pre-team stage that larger funds cannot serve. Selective allocations to US founders are made where the team has previously co-invested.
Cleo Ventures Fund II closed at $34M in May 2026, anchored by Otium Capital. The fund is backed by more than 40 AI entrepreneurs and operators as LPs. Fund II has already made two initial investments, which have not yet been publicly disclosed. The firm's predecessor Resonance vehicle invested in MatX, Fintool, DeepIP, Animaj, and Alice & Bob, among others.
Leadership
Antoine Veret is co-founder and General Partner. He was previously Partner at Breega, leading pre-seed and seed investments across Western Europe, and earlier served as COO of Green-Acres, a real estate platform he helped scale to €6M ARR, and co-founded Bizzdata. He holds an MSc in Computer Science from Centrale Nantes and an MSc in Business Administration from HEC Paris. Maxime Le Dantec is co-founder and General Partner. Before Cleo, he was a Principal at Balderton Capital, leading its France efforts and investing in companies including GitGuardian, Kili Technology, Sweep, Photoroom, and Numeral. Earlier, he founded Convai, a conversational AI startup where he served as CTO. He holds an MSc in Data Science from Centrale Paris.
Cleo Trailblazers Club
Cleo's most distinctive structural feature is the Trailblazers Club, a curated group of AI founders and operators who hold carried interest in the fund in exchange for coaching portfolio founders. Members include Olivier Pailhes, co-founder and former CEO of Aircall, which he scaled to $200M ARR and 1,000 employees; Lucie Buisson, former CPO and employee #13 at Contentsquare, who helped build a $5.6B SaaS platform; and Thomas Scialom, Senior Staff Researcher at Meta AI who led the development of Llama 2 and Llama 3 and is now working on Meta's agentic model.
Investment Strategy
Cleo writes $300K–$1M first checks at pre-seed and seed, often before a single line of code or first hire, and leads or co-leads rounds. The fund targets 30–40 investments with reserves for follow-on. The Trailblazers Club provides hands-on coaching to portfolio companies across go-to-market, product strategy, research, and organizational building, with carry alignment rather than purely advisory relationships ensuring genuine engagement.
Notable Investments
Antoine Veret — Co-Founder & General Partner
antoine@resonance.vc
Maxime Le Dantec — Co-Founder & General Partner
France
