Merantix Capital is a Berlin-based venture capital firm founded in 2016 by Dr. Rasmus Rothe and Adrian Locher. It operates as part of the wider Merantix group, Europe's largest AI community organisation, and combines a venture studio, a direct investment fund, and an extensive corporate and institutional LP network. The firm partners with founders from pre-idea through seed stage, with a thesis that AI's biggest winners will be companies embedding intelligence directly into critical industrial workflows, not primarily those building models. The ~$113M USD AI Fund, closed in June 2026, is Merantix Capital's largest fund to date, nearly three times the size of its 2020 ~$38M USD debut vehicle. It is one of the largest dedicated early-stage industrial AI funds raised in Germany in 2026, backed entirely by corporate and institutional LPs rather than government capital.
Merantix Capital invests in pre-seed and seed stage AI-native companies across logistics, manufacturing, energy, finance, healthcare, life sciences, robotics, enterprise software, and physical AI.
The firm targets founders who combine deep industry domain knowledge with AI expertise, and specifically avoids pure foundation model plays in favour of companies applying AI to transform operations in large, established industries.
Half of the new fund is reserved for founders emerging from the Merantix venture studio; the other half goes to direct investments across Europe.
The Merantix Capital AI Fund closed at ~$113M USD in June 2026.
The fund will make approximately 40 investments. LPs include Union Investment, Jungheinrich (which invested ~$5.5M USD as part of a broader AI partnership), KPMG Germany (strategic partner since December 2024), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, a deliberately strategic LP mix that gives portfolio companies direct access to enterprise customers, pilot projects, and industry expertise from day one.
The fund is split 50/50 between venture studio incubations and direct pre-seed/seed investments. Active early deployments include Droidrun, Arqh, and Outpost Bio, with several additional stealth investments across logistics, manufacturing, recruiting, ERP, energy, and fashion tech.
Leadership
Dr. Rasmus Rothe is Co-Founder and General Partner. He 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 current chairman of the German AI Association (KI Bundesverband).
Adrian Locher is Co-Founder and General Partner. A serial entrepreneur and investor, he previously founded and scaled Swiss marketplace DeinDeal before its acquisition by the Ringier Group, and has since helped build and scale more than 20 companies across Europe.
Nicole Büttner is Founding Partner, who previously served as Founder and CEO of Merantix Momentum, the group's AI transformation consultancy, and is joining the Capital investment team full-time alongside the new fund.
Investment Strategy
Merantix Capital invests at pre-seed and seed stage with a hands-on, studio-infused model. Half of the fund backs founders who work within the Merantix venture studio to co-create and validate new AI companies; the other half makes direct investments into external founders across Europe.
The firm's stated edge is providing the two things early-stage founders find hardest to source: talent and traction. Strategic LPs function as a built-in customer and pilot network from day one. Merantix has investors based in Berlin and London and backs founders across Europe.
Notable Investments
Other
Merantix Capital founders gain access to the Merantix AI Campus in Berlin (80+ resident companies, 300+ annual events per year), the London AI Hub, AI House Davos, and Merantix Momentum (70+ AI engineers running 100+ enterprise projects per year).
Dr. Rasmus Rothe — Co-Founder & General Partner
rasmus@merantix.com
Adrian Locher — Co-Founder & General Partner
adrian@merantix.com
Nicole Büttner — Founding Partner
Germany
