Wherever Visionaries Club shows up, a distinguished crowd seems to follow.
Of the many starry attendees at the big AI Summit in Paris last week, a good chunk of them could be found mingling at an event hosted at the American Cathedral by the Berlin and London-based VC firm. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt beamed in remotely, joining a crowd in the room which included LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, DeepMind boss Demis Hassabis, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, French AI minister Clara Chappaz and Accel partner Sonali de Rycker. Wise cofounder and Plural partner Taavet Hinrikus was also there. So too were French billionaire Xavier Niel and Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch.
Tech event organisers will tell you: it’s not easy to get VIPs to turn up. But Visionaries, which was started in 2019 by the firm’s partners Robert Lacher and Sebastian Pollok, has made a useful habit of rubbing shoulders with high-profile techies. According to the firm’s LinkedIn page, the limited partners who’ve backed the firm include the founders of tech successes such as UiPath, Spotify, Skype, Adyen, Miro, Zolando and Wolt.
Some of Europe’s largest family businesses, such as Swarovski, Miele, Haniel and Siemens, have also invested. World Cup winner and fledgling tech maven Mario Götze — who appears on Sifted’s list of 2024’s top angel investors — and ex-Formula One champion Nico Rosberg are also LPs.
Visionaries has raised more than $600m across five funds, and is raising money for a sixth vehicle, which will back young deeptech startups.
Where Visionaries Club has invested
How does Visionaries Club play its hand? The VC’s bets are spread around software companies and tools that enable employees to work remotely. Top name founders previously backed by the firm have also re-invested in the VC’s funds — examples include Hanno Renner (Personio), Jenny Podewils (Leapsome), Daniel Khachab (Choco) and Christian Reber (Pitch).
It’s selective: in 2024, the VC wrote cheques to just four startups, according to Sifted data. The $220m payday announced by Paris’s buzzy AI startup H Company was the biggest deal the VC has been involved in to date. Another notable Visionaries investment last year was its contribution to nuclear company Proxima Fusion’s €20m round.
The VC focuses most of its dealmaking in the UK, Germany and France (91% of its European portfolio startups are based in one of these countries); it frequently co-invests with other top VC names like Index Ventures (seven times), Accel (five) and Sequoia (five).
The majority of its dealmaking is with young companies — Sifted counts 21 early-stage investments, 12 growth deals and a single late-stage deal (an investment in open banking unicorn TrueLayer).
Visionaries Club’s track record boasts a few unicorn hits besides TrueLayer, including Choco (software for restaurants and suppliers) and UiPath (business automation platform) are two others.
2024/25 investments
1/ H Company
Round: $220m seed in May 2024
Notable investors: Accel, Elaia, Bpifrance, Creandum, Eurazeo, Amazon, Samsung
Paris-based AI startup that builds agentic foundational models and was founded in early 2024 by former scientists from DeepMind. The startup recently unveiled its first product, Runner H, that can turn instructions into actions.
2/ Lindus Health
Round: $55m Series B in January 2024
Notable investors: Balderton Capital, Creandum, Seedcamp, Firstminute Capital
The startup, backed by American investor Peter Thiel, wants to transform the very messy and analogue world of clinical trials. It promises to speed up execution and reduce costs.
3/ Proxima Fusion
Round: €20m seed in April 2024
Notable investors: Max Planck Foundation, Plural, UVC Partners, High-Tech Gründerfonds, Bayern Kapital
Spun out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, this company’s developing nuclear fusion reactors, all with the goal of harnessing this extremely elusive power. Proxima is tackling the challenge of sustaining high-temperature plasma.
4/ Ameba
Round: $7.1m seed in October 2024
Notable investors: Hedosophia
A software company tackling supply chain complexity. It was founded by Cedrik Hoffmann, former supply chain director and cofounder of e-commerce giant VALOREO, and Craig Massie, a former Palantir engineer.
5/ Adfin
Round: $4.9m seed round in July 2024
Notable investors: Index Ventures
The company, which automates invoicing, was founded in 2024 by Ciprian Diaconasu, a former founding engineer at cloud banking platform Mambu, and Tom Pope, who built the payments business at Tink, which was acquired by Visa for $2.2bn.
The full list of Visionaries Club bets
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/visionaries-club-tech-vips/
