b2venture

Munich is getting ready for Bits & Pretzels – meet us and our portfolio companies here: → Monday morning: Join our European Resilience Brunch, co-hosted with 1KOMMA5°, eCAPITAL ENTREPRENEURIAL PARTNERS, and Eurazeo at the 1KOMMA5° showroom. → Monday evening: DeepL is hosting the Founder’s Fuel-up 2026 at its office, in collaboration with the Startup-Verband and IHK für München und Oberbayern. DeepL CTO Sebastian Enderlein and Chief Scientist Stefan Mesken will be joined by Heike Freund, COO of our portfolio company Marvel Fusion, as well as b2venture angel Verena Pausder, Chairwoman of the Startup-Verband. → Wednesday: Meet our portfolio company NEURA Robotics and our team members Jan-Hendrik Buerk and Marie Schwertner at Bits & Pretzels’ official networking event, taking place in the Schottenhamel Festzelt. And if you would like to catch up with one of our team members for a coffee or pretzel outside the main events, simply drop us a message.

We are excited to welcome Dario Stuth as Associate in the b2venture Fund Team, based in our Munich office! Dario brings a technical and entrepreneurial background, with experience across industrial automation, robotics, and manufacturing. He worked as a Founder’s Associate at Peter Park and gained experience at kiutra following a Quantum Entrepreneurship Fellowship, deepening his interest in technically complex businesses and the founders behind them. He holds a master’s degree in Management and Technology from TUM School of Management. At b2venture, Dario focuses on businesses ranging from industrial tech to AI infrastructure, with a particular interest in technologies that are redefining how software and the physical world interact. “A conversation with a founder could leave me seeing an entire industry differently. That’s what draws me to venture: following that curiosity across different fields and helping ambitious ideas become companies that matter,” says Dario. His enthusiasm for technology extends beyond work: Dario enjoys restoring Vespas and classic cars. He also spends time road cycling, hiking, and mountaineering. A warm welcome to b2venture, Dario – we are very happy to have you with us! PS: Heading to Bits & Pretzels in Munich next week? Send Dario a message to meet for a coffee or a pretzel – he’d love to connect!

With just three months from design to integration, our portfolio company PAVE Space is bringing its first demo mission to orbit – a big step towards realizing their vision to build a new class of orbital transfer vehicles, which will transport satellites from low Earth orbit to their final operational orbit in less than 24 hours. Congratulations to Julie Böhning, Jérémy Marciacq and the entire team on this milestone! cc Gerrit Jurilj 🇺🇦 Jasper Strohkark Dr. Friederike Hoffmann Nicole Herzog

Last week, we gathered over 100 angel investors, LPs, and industry experts for our Insight Forum in London. Rather than hosting a formal conference, we got out into the city and its ecosystem to meet the people building and investing there. Along the way, we explored what the future of investing may look like across 18 workshops in four tracks. Highlights included: → Responsible Investing: Anna Bosch and Anna Rösler joined the FRAME conference to discuss ESG and responsible investing with fellow VCs and LPs – and what meaningful engagement looks like today. Focus topics of the track were resilience and ethics in AI. → DeepTech and the Future of Space: Dr. Friederike Hoffmann and Gerrit Jurilj 🇺🇦 organized a visit to space investor Seraphim Space to meet Space DOTS® and hear about their sensors in orbit, followed by a visit to Imperial College London’s space engineering lab for a research deep dive. → Responsible AI: Florian Schweitzer led a workshop at Westminster Abbey together with Dr. Jamie Hawkey on the question: what kind of world do we – as humans – want to create with AI, and what role do we want to play in the process? → Investing in European Venture: Mathias O., Andreas Goeldi and Sabrina Stöckl took our participants to Notion Capital and Lightspeed, and went behind the scenes at rule30, which is rethinking algorithmic investing. Furthermore, they met teams building in Europe, from our portfolio and beyond. In addition, we came together at Atomico for a macro perspective from HSBC, live startup pitches, and a session with Martin Vetterli and Andreas Goeldi on which technologies will drive the next wave of startups and how Europe can win this time. Thank you to everyone who made these days in London insightful, memorable, and exciting. cc Jan-Hendrik Buerk

What competitive advantage is AI-resistant? One answer might be: proprietary data, especially when combined with data collection infrastructure and dedicated models, Anna Bosch argues in her latest blog post. Nature data is particularly interesting in this context, as it is difficult to collect at scale, but for the same reasons potentially difficult to replicate. Follow the link in the comments to find out how startups like NatureMetrics, Pivotal Future, Sorcerer, Hula Earth, WaterSense, Perennial, and Seqana are using the nature data flywheel to thrive in times of AI, rather than being made obsolete. What startups did we forget? Leave us a comment below.

Last week, in collaboration with HubSpot, we brought together GTM leaders from our portfolio. Gero G. (VP Sales, JUPUS) joined Kaythlin Das (HubSpot) for a fireside chat on GTM hiring in high-velocity startups: who to hire first, how to build a great team fast, and common pitfalls to avoid. Before joining JUPUS as VP Sales, Gero spent six years at Google and has founder experience of his own – a perspective that shaped a lot of the discussion on what actually matters when hiring early GTM leaders. Thank you to all the founders and industry experts who joined us! cc Anna Bosch, Isabel E., Anna Rösler, Fabian Hartmann

Our portfolio company Marvel Fusion has launched Caelora, a subsidiary to commercialize its high-energy laser technology for fusion energy, scientific research, as well as medical, industrial, and security applications. Marvel Fusion develops fusion energy technology to deliver safe, environmentally friendly power. Its reactor design is based on short-pulse, high-energy lasers suited for commercializing baseload fusion electricity. Caelora is intended to open an additional revenue stream for Marvel Fusion, shorten the technical learning curve for high-energy laser systems, and strengthen the supply chain that fusion energy will depend on. Congratulations to Moritz von der Linden, Heike Freund, Dr. Nicolas Burkardt, and the entire Marvel Fusion and Caelora team on this milestone. cc Gerrit Jurilj 🇺🇦 Valentin Wierse

Thanks to everyone who joined Builders’ Circle – Zurich edition! Last week, Andreas Goeldi, Dr. Friederike Hoffmann, and Marie Schwertner gathered a hand-picked group of aspiring entrepreneurs to exchange ideas, get to know each other, and find the ideal co-founder.

Congratulations to Julie Böhning, Jérémy Marciacq, and the entire team of our portfolio company PAVE Space for securing a podium finish in the Top100 Swiss Startup Awards 2026. PAVE Space solves a key issue in space logistics: once launched, satellites destined for higher-energy orbits must rely on their own propulsion systems to complete the journey, a process that can take months and delay time to revenue. The company addresses this bottleneck with a new class of orbital transfer vehicles. Its kickstage transports satellites from low Earth orbit to their final destination in less than 24 hours, fundamentally improving mission timelines and economics. If you are interested in joining one of the fastest-growing new space companies in Europe: PAVE Space is hiring – link in comments.

We are happy to announce that b2venture is a supporting partner of Hack Apertus, a three-stage open-source hackathon series with the goal of accelerating the adoption of Apertus, Switzerland's open large language model, across academia, the private and public sectors. In addition, our partner Andreas Goeldi will join Hack Apertus' advisory board. The online hackathon takes place from October 1–16, 2026, and is open to everyone, in addition to on-site hackathons across six cities in Switzerland between October 2026 and May 2027. During the grand finals on May 14, 2027, in St. Gallen, the winning teams of the hackathons pitch for the Main Award. Registrations for Hack Apertus are now open – link in the comments below.