Mahir Sahin, a senior Google executive (2009-2025) and ex-lead advisor at Alphabet’s Moonshot X Factory, has launched a €50 million fund at his London-based venture firm Cloudberry Ventures. The fund targets Europe’s Deeptech advancements needed to surpass current AI constraints
Advisors and limited partners in the new fund include Mark Bennett (VP, Google Partnerships), Neil Ventura (ex-De Beers), Ehsanul Islam (VP, Qualcomm), and Julia Holze (CosmicGold). The fund, targeting Seed to Series A stages with tickets of €1-€2 million, focuses on industrial infrastructure, compute infrastructure, and financial infrastructure.
Sahin cautions that the current AI trajectory is not sustainable: “The physical chip was the deep tech big bang for the software era. And now we have reached a point where software and the AI race is hollowing out its own value. If we don’t invest in the deep tech that powers AI — the physical substrate — the whole AI project hits a wall.”
Cloudberry Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on DeepTech investments. It invests from Seed to Series A across Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia. It backs teams with defensible moats such as data-driven software and patented hardware that serve as building blocks of societal and economic infrastructure.
Cloudberry aims to stop the “IP strip-mining” of European innovation. “US investors are exploiting this by buying up European DeepTech at a 10x discount and flipping the IP to the States. Europe’s innovators need investors who are fluent in science and scale, and that’s what we provide at Cloudberry,” Sahin added.
The firm states that the launch occurs amid “unprecedented bottlenecks” faced by leading cloud providers. Sahin emphasises that the “SaaSpocalypse” is here. “We are attempting to build an exponential digital future on top of a linear physical supply chain. We urgently need cleaner, more scalable, and affordable materials, paired with intelligent AI technologies to unlock new levels of efficiency and unleash economic growth.”
Cloudberry focuses on three pillars: industrial infrastructure (advanced materials, energy, and autonomous manufacturing, compute infrastructure (next-gen memory, quantum, photonics, and Edge AI, and financial Infrastructure (Blockchain-enabled settlement and digital assets). The new fund has already invested in Xavveo, a Berlin-based photonics radar startup developing 360-degree awareness systems for robotics.
Sahin’s previous investment vehicle, Cloudberry Pioneer Investments (CPI), achieved an 86% Gross IRR and a 2.4x MOIC in 16 months. One of its notable portfolio companies included Quantum Brilliance, a company building the world’s largest quantum production line.
“DeepTech demands a paradigm shift in how we build and back ventures. Europe produces world-class science and IP, yet comparatively few ventures are built from it — because deep tech founders are world-class scientists, not necessarily world-class entrepreneurs. What’s missing is a new playbook: patient capital, systems thinking, and the operational experience to turn breakthroughs into global champions. Cloudberry Ventures brings all this together: the capital and patience for long development cycles and its venture partners who bring the systems thinking and hands-on expertise to help deep tech founders make the leap from lab to market,” said Julia Holze, founder of Cosmic Gold and Venture Partner Cloudberry Ventures.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/03/ex-google-moonshot-x-advisor-launches-e50-million-cloudberry-ventures-deeptech-fund-amid-saaspocalypse/
