The Berlin-based early-stage firm led by Carsten Maschmeyer and Alexander Kölpin will back pre-seed and seed B2B software startups building secure, compliant, and productivity-driven AI for everyday business use.
seed+speed Ventures, the Berlin-based early-stage fund led by Carsten Maschmeyer and Alexander Kölpin, has closed its fundraising at €90 million.
The original planned target size for this third fund was €30 million. With investor approval, the hard cap was increased twice.
seed+speed III will invest in European B2B and enterprise software companies at the pre-seed and seed stages, with initial ticket sizes ranging from €500,000 to €1.5 million. For each startup, the fund can provide several million euros in follow-on capital. With the new fund, seed+speed Ventures aims to focus on the secure rollout and use of AI in everyday business operations — from security, data protection, and governance to quality, cost control, and measurable productivity.
The investor base includes institutional investors such as banks and foundations, media groups, family offices, industrial holdings, professionals from the legal and tax sectors, real estate entrepreneurs, and high-net-worth individuals.
Carsten Maschmeyer, Managing Partner at seed+speed Ventures, contends that “If Europe wants to compete in the global AI race, we urgently need to drive innovation. We firmly believe in AI from Europe.”
“There are strong, innovative founders here with an inventor’s mindset and world-class technology.
What is often missing, unfortunately, is the power to build large companies from it, and that’s where add value. We’re especially proud that several successful founders from our first two seed+speed funds have since joined us as investors following their exits. That is a strong signal of trust.”
According to Alexander Kölpin, Managing Partner of seed+speed Ventures, the question is no longer whether companies will use AI, but how they use it to remain competitive.
“We invest in Pre-Seed and Seed teams that build AI as a core technology, as well as in companies that provide tools to use AI safely and effectively.
With €90 million, we have created a strong early-stage vehicle for enterprise AI in Europe. We invest deliberately at the earliest stages and back founders with follow-on fundraising, go-to-market execution, and sales-led scaling, so European technology becomes solutions that set international standards.”
Fundraising for seed+speed III began in summer 2024. For the first time, the new fund is open to European startups outside the DACH region.
Since then, the investment team has already invested in 13 startups, including:
• Orq.ai, based in Amsterdam (Netherlands), is a Generative AI collaboration/LLMOps platform that helps teams develop, test, deploy, and monitor AI agents securely in production.
• RIIICO, based in Düsseldorf (Germany), is an AI-based software platform that helps industrial companies create a digital 3D model of their existing factories, enabling them to plan and execute factory expansions, new production lines, and other conversion projects four times faster and more flexibly than before. Customers already include well-known automotive manufacturers.
• Optimuse, based in Vienna (Austria), is an AI platform for building engineering, retrofit projects, and operations. It shows planners of new and existing buildings early on which technical options reduce costs and emissions the most.
• Eleven Dynamics, based in Solothurn (Switzerland), provides automated inline metrology and quality assurance for manufacturing, helping companies reduce cycle times while improving quality. Customers include BMW, Audi, and Sauber Motorsport.