Participated · Equity · Aug 2023

Qualifyze operates a compliance and quality-assurance platform for the pharmaceutical supply chain that combines a network of auditors with a database of suppliers and buyers to track adherence to standards such as GxP, ESG, ISO, and CAPA. The company manages a network of about 250 auditors and a database covering roughly 3,000 suppliers and 1,200 customers, and it uses technology to run analytics and surface manufacturing data. While technology powers its data management and analytics, the business model remains anchored around people — some auditors are employees and others are contracted, leading Qualifyze to build its own training and vetting processes. Qualifyze plans to use new funding to expand in the U.S. and to broaden its product set with additional analytics and AI capabilities. The Frankfurt-based startup is led by founder and CEO Dr. David Schneider, a former McKinsey consultant. Financially, Qualifyze announced a $54M Series B, bringing its total raised to $84M to date and a valuation the company says is "significantly higher" than the prior $100M post-money. Qualifyze offers a digital platform that manages audits end-to-end and captures audit data at scale to check supply-chain compliance for pharmaceutical firms. Founded in 2019 and based in Frankfurt, the company centralizes supplier-audit workflows and compliance data. Qualifyze says it serves more than 1,000 pharmaceutical clients and has been more than doubling every year while remaining profitable. Leadership positions the product as creating a new category of compliance data to increase drug safety and enable better allocation of investments into supply-chain compliance beyond GxP. The company plans to use new funding to accelerate growth and to further its mission of transforming supply-chain compliance in healthcare in a sustainable, data-driven manner.

Participated · Equity · Jul 2023

Akhetonics is developing general-purpose, all-optical chips intended to deliver high-performance, energy-efficient computing using photons rather than electronics. Their approach is fully optical and digital, aiming to be compatible with existing software workloads rather than relying on analog techniques. The company says it has demonstrated feasibility by rethinking architecture from first principles to avoid needing billions of optical transistors. Akhetonics plans to deliver its first commercial product mid-next year and will use recent seed funding largely to expand its team and build prototypes. Management highlights a diverse, localizable supply chain and lower development costs—reporting chip designs can cost around €50,000—positioning the company as a European alternative for high-performance compute. Targeted early use cases include real-time environments such as networking, avionics and space, though observers remain cautious about timing, demand, and competition from integrated photonics or hybrid solutions. Akhetonics is a Berlin-based startup developing all-optical processors and optical transistors. The company says it has multiple prototypes of an optical transistor and the foundation of a processor design. Akhetonics claims its all-optical processors will offer higher bandwidth, faster speeds, greater energy efficiency and higher information density than electronic processors. The firm is aiming to build a full-scale all-optical general-purpose CPU and targets a full prototype by 2024. It raised €2.3 million in early-stage funding led by Runa Capital to accelerate research and development and to integrate the technology into its first product. Competitors named in the article include Lightmatter, Lightelligence and Optalysys, and investors see applications across high-performance networking, security hardware and quantum computing.

Participated · Seed · May 2023

NetBird is a Berlin-based software company that offers an open-source network security platform designed to create secure, private networks for organisations of all sizes. The product eliminates the need for port configuration, centralised gateways, and complex firewall rules, dramatically reducing operational complexity for engineers and DevOps teams. Since launching on GitHub in 2021, NetBird has grown through a product-led, community-driven model in which users freely test the software in their homelabs before championing wider adoption. Its customer roster spans managed service providers, technology firms, large enterprises, and public-sector organisations, with names such as Sport Alliance, netgo, Signicat, and VIEW Group already deploying the platform. NetBird positions itself as a European-developed, privacy-focused alternative to legacy VPN solutions that often suffer from recurring security vulnerabilities and heavy maintenance burdens. The company’s go-to-market strategy centres on transparent open-source development, minimal friction onboarding, and strong community engagement. Fresh capital from its Series A round gives NetBird the resources to extend engineering efforts, broaden product use cases, bolster community support, and continue global expansion.

Participated · Seed · Jun 2022

OpenReplay provides a session replay stack that allows developers to replay everything users do on their web app to visually identify where and why they got stuck. The core software is open-source and can be self-hosted so customer data remains on a company’s infrastructure, while additional services are offered as paid add-ons. The company positions its product specifically for developers rather than marketers or product managers. OpenReplay’s CEO and founder Mehdi Osman emphasizes the ability to self-host without involving third parties to handle user data. The startup plans to use new funding to grow its community, accelerate deployment, and improve user experience. The product competes with both commercial tools and open-source alternatives, aiming to combine openness with a paid services model.

Participated · Seed · Feb 2022

Adaptyv Biosystems operates an automated, cloud-accessible laboratory that closes the critical “design-test-learn” loop for AI-driven protein engineering. Its platform performs high-throughput experimental assays to verify the function of proteins proposed by computational models, addressing the cost and accessibility barriers that typically slow validation. In beta, the system has already tested more than 10,000 proteins in partnership with about 30 pharmaceutical and biotech teams, and in one international competition it boosted hit rates from 2.5 % to 13 % within two months. By automating wet-lab steps and streaming data back to model builders, the company aims to accelerate the creation of therapeutic and industrial proteins. With fresh capital, Adaptyv plans to broaden the menu of assays, deepen robotic automation, and launch an API that pipes experimental results directly into AI models. The company is headquartered in the Lausanne area (Épalinges) and positions itself as an infrastructure provider for the growing protein-design ecosystem.