Fly Ventures is a Berlin-based European first-check investor backing technically difficult pre-seed and seed companies, generally before product/revenue, with European diaspora founders in the US also eligible. Lead/co-lead investing and selective follow-ons are supported; EUR1–4m numeric checks are historical reporting, with no current numeric policy independently established.
Founded 2015
Type Venture capital 3 Fly Ventures Fund III 2024-12-06 2024-12-06 €80M EUR80mclosedDec2024 Tech.euannouncementDec6, counselpublicationDec20; notexactlegalday, latestknownverified.
Fly Ventures Fund II 2020 2020 €53M EUR53mpredecessor2020confirmedbycounsel2024-12-20; exactlegalclosingdateunknown.
Fly Ventures Fund I 2017-12-21 2017-12-21 $41M ReportedUSD41mclosed notEUR41m.
SHOW MORE
— — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – —
SHOW MORE
$— 2026-04-30 CirqlOne Fly Ventures $8M 2026-03-11 Zymtrace Venture Guides , Fly Ventures , 6 Degrees Capital $50M 2026-02-11 GitGuardian Fly Ventures , Suranga Chandratillake $17M 2026 Gitbutler Andreessen Horowitz , Fly Ventures $50M 2026 Orbital Inc. Compound , Station F , Plural Platform , Radical Ventures , NVentures , Fly Ventures , Plural $2M 2025-05-12 Zendo Fly Ventures $— 2025-04-23 BandLab Kindred Ventures , Fly Ventures $— 2025-02-04 Neuralk Fly Ventures $— 2024-12-03 Carbmee Fly Ventures $4M 2024-11-07 Agemo Fly Ventures $— 2024-07-24 Lakera Atomico , Fly Ventures , Inovia Capital , Redalpine $50M 2023-06-14 Fernride 10x Founders , Fly Ventures , Speedinvest $— 2023-05-15 Pear Bio Compound , SOSV , Octopus Ventures , Hoxton Ventures , Fly Ventures , Crista Galli Ventures $13M 2023-04-12 Thynk Fly Ventures $2M 2023-02-28 Cordless Fly Ventures $10M 2022-10-31 SDA Fly Ventures $— 2022-06-21 TradeLink Point Nine Capital , Fly Ventures , Insight Partners $16M 2022-04-07 Better Origin Balderton Capital , Fly Ventures , Suranga Chandratillake $— 2022-02-07 remberg Earlybird Venture Capital , Fly Ventures , Speedinvest $— 2021-12-01 Metaview Fly Ventures $10M 2021-10-13 9Fin Redalpine , Fly Ventures $44M 2021 GitGuardian Balderton Capital , Fly Ventures $— 2020-08-31 Semalytix b2venture , Fly Ventures $8M 2020-08-18 claimsforce Point Nine Capital , Notion Capital , Fly Ventures , La Famiglia , Patrick Norris $2M 2019-12-03 Salv Fly Ventures $— 2017-12-14 Finiata Point Nine Capital , Kaya VC , Kulczyk Investments , Fly Ventures , DNS Capital , Redalpine $5M 2017-07-07 Side Angular Ventures , Fly Ventures $4M Unknown date Xmemory Fly Ventures $— Unknown date TimeTrace Labs Fly Ventures $5M Unknown date Surfboard Fly Ventures $— Unknown date Orbital Materials Fly Ventures $6M Unknown date Ophelos Fly Ventures $2M Unknown date Ophelos Fly Ventures $— Unknown date GenLots Fly Ventures $— Unknown date Elea Health Fly Ventures $1M Unknown date Chatterbug Fly Ventures $— Unknown date Cakewalk Fly Ventures $2M Unknown date Imvitro Compound , LDV Capital , Fly Ventures , MMC Ventures $— 2025-03-12 Elea Fly Ventures $— 2024 remberg GmbH Fly Ventures , Speedinvest $10M 2022-10-31 Software Defined Automation Fly Ventures $800K 2018 Objectiv Fly Ventures $— Unknown date Elea AI Fly Ventures
SHOW MORE
team@apexlogos.ai · 4 hours ago
Investment-fund research reviewed 2026-10-06. Publicly identified funds, dates, amounts and fundraising status are below. Undisclosed commitments remain unknown; this is not a complete register of private SPVs or parallel entities.
Funds and stages
| Fund | Verified amount/status | Announcement and supporting source |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Fund III | **€80m closed**, not merely a target | Transaction counsel [YPOG](https://www.ypog.law/en/press/ypog-advises-fly-ventures-on-80-million-closing ), published 2024-12-20, confirms December 2024 closing. [Tech.eu](https://tech.eu/2024/12/06/fly-ventures-closes-eur80m-fund-iii-to-support-deeptech-founders-in-europe/ ), 2024-12-06, independently reports the close. |
| Fund II | **€53m**, 2020 fund generation | Same YPOG announcement confirms its work on this predecessor. Exact legal closing date not established here. |
| First fund | **US$41m closed**, 2017 reported amount | [Tech.eu](https://tech.eu/2017/12/21/fly-ventures-fund ), 2017-12-21. Retain reported dollar currency rather than assuming €41m. |
A search for newer 2025/2026 funds or Fund IV did not establish another close. Fund III is latest-known, not a guarantee that no later vehicle exists. Fund commitments are distinct from current AUM, deployable reserves and company check sizes. No reliable current aggregate AUM figure was verified; do not sum differently denominated historical funds and label the result AUM.
The official [How we invest](https://fly.vc/how-we-invest ) page (undated; accessed 2026-10-06) states pre-seed/seed, inception-stage investments, generally pre-product/pre-revenue, lead or co-lead role and selective follow-ons. It supports Europe and US founders with a European connection. AI, robotics, infrastructure and cybersecurity are interests rather than exclusive boundaries. Later rounds in historical records do not establish a growth-stage new-investment mandate.
The saved €1–4m initial-check range has historical reporting support, but current official mandate text read here gives no numeric range. Retain it as a dated historical claim pending a current firm confirmation. The 2017 fund reporting described materially smaller rounds, indicating strategy evolution rather than a fixed timeless ticket size.
Funds recorded in Adex after this review:
| Fund | Disclosed amount | Announcement / filing date |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Fly Ventures Fund I | USD 41000000 | 2017-12-21 |
| Fly Ventures Fund II | EUR 53000000 | 2020 |
| Fly Ventures Fund III | EUR 80000000 | 2024-12-06 | SHOW MORE
team@apexlogos.ai · 4 hours ago
Match research 2026-10-06 / FlyVentures / sha256:7c77dfab4b0a011b895337579cd1c027e4e17ac77d454621e69ded57171a8d56 / part 2 of 2
Imported completed research. Baseline Adex/Signal statements describe prior state, not independent verification. Retain cited attribution, date, currency and classification caveats.
**No verified neurotech investment found in the sources checked.** Checked the snapshot, official portfolio/strategy, firm-plus-neurotech/neuroscience/brain searches, and the apparently relevant Neuralk and TimeTrace records. This is a bounded evidence result, not an assertion that Fly has never invested in neurotechnology.
- **TimeTrace Labs: verified portfolio company, brain/mental-health adjacency only.** Fly’s indexed [official portfolio](https://fly.vc/portfolio ) lists TimeTrace as AI for scarce data. [Nordic9’s dedicated transaction page](https://nordic9.com/news/timetrace-labs-raised-a-seed-funding-round-wi/ ) is dated **2025-12-17**, names Fly, Seedcamp and Paul Forster, and gives an approximately **US$3.98m seed** round. Amount and stage are reporting-level, not corroborated here by a company financing release. The company’s [Foundations and Collaborations](https://www.timetracelabs.com/blog/foundations ), **2026-07-17**, describes temporal world models, physiological/multimodal data and validation on Fondation FondaMental’s longitudinal mental-health cohorts. This supports neuroscience/mental-health research adjacency, not a demonstrated neural interface, stimulation or brain-signal platform.
- **Neuralk-AI:** the name, neural-network models and a cofounder’s neuroscience doctorate do not make enterprise tabular AI a neurotech product. [École polytechnique’s profile](https://www.polytechnique.edu/actualites/neuralk-ai-co-fondee-par-un-x-pionniere-de-lia-des-donnees-structurees ) (2025 article, accessed 2026-10-06) describes commerce-focused structured-data AI and the founder background. Exclude from direct neurotech.
- **Cumulus Neuroscience is not established as Fly-backed.** The snapshot’s TimeTrace investment cites a [Nordic9 Cumulus article](https://nordic9.com/news/cumulus-neuroscience-raises-33m-with-whiterock-finance-co-fundni-clarendon-fund-managers-acf-investors/ ), **2025-07-02**. Its main transaction lists Clarendon, ACF, Co-FundNI and Whiterock, with no Fly. TimeTrace appears only under a related-deals link, explaining the likely source mismatch. Do not turn that page into a Fly/Cumulus investment.
- **Elea, Pear Bio and Imvitro:** healthcare/pathology, oncology and fertility leads in the saved data do not by themselves establish neurotechnology. Their funding details were not reverified in this focused dossier. Keep them as separate review leads.
## Conflicts, gaps and concrete Adex review notes
1. Record Fund III as EUR 80m, closed December 2024; keep Fund II and first fund separate. No verified current AUM or newer fund.
2. Preserve current first-check/pre-seed/seed mandate; tag any later financing participation as follow-on where independently supported. Do not generalize from later rounds.
3. Add/check **Wayve’s 2017 seed**: official firm evidence exists, but it was absent from the saved investment list printed during this research.
4. Review **Orbital Inc., Orbital Materials and Orbital Industries** mappings. The saved Orbital Inc. participation uses a Goldilocks Compound profile, while official Fly evidence supplies its own entry attribution. Initial 2022 pre-seed is verified; Fly’s participation in the separate 2026 $50m Series B still requires transaction-specific confirmation.
5. **SDA / Software Defined Automation** appear as two records for the same 2022-10-31 $10m transaction. **Elea / Elea AI / Elea Health** and remberg variants also merit identity deduplication review; no automatic merge is proposed.
6. Replace/review **TimeTrace’s Cumulus source** with the dedicated TimeTrace transaction and official portfolio sources. This is a concrete contamination risk for neurotech classification.
7. **BandLab** is sourced in the snapshot to an article URL about AI agents and a $7m seed, which does not clearly support the entity; verify before retaining attribution. The current portfolio’s CodeWords/AI workflow automation entry is a possible lead, not a confirmed correction.
8. **Zymtrace** snapshot’s $8.5m seed amount is consistent with the company release; retain distinction from $12.2m total and add the previously unannounced $3.7m pre-seed only with unknown date precision.
9. The snapshot founding year **2015** was not independently resolved; third-party directories differ. Retain as unverified pending official registry/founding evidence. Current [team page](https://fly.vc/team ), undated, accessed 2026-10-06, lists the six saved names; December 2024 YPOG reporting additionally named Marie Brayer. Treat this as historical/current roster timing rather than silently combining both lists.
10. Missing: exact legal fund closing dates; current numeric tickets; fund-specific attribution and check amounts; complete portfolio transaction histories; readable NFX profiles. No personal investments at partners’ prior firms were attributed to Fly.
All linked sources were accessed 2026-10-06. Official pages lacking publication dates are explicitly marked undated. Press releases are company assertions carried by distribution services, not independent editorial verification. This dossier is complete for the requested research categories, with unresolved items preserved for later human/Adex review. SHOW MORE
team@apexlogos.ai · 4 hours ago
Match research 2026-10-06 / FlyVentures / sha256:7c77dfab4b0a011b895337579cd1c027e4e17ac77d454621e69ded57171a8d56 / part 1 of 2
Imported completed research. Baseline Adex/Signal statements describe prior state, not independent verification. Retain cited attribution, date, currency and classification caveats.
# Fly Ventures
- Exact Adex ID: `FlyVentures`
- Canonical Adex page: https://adex.page/firms/FlyVentures
- Official website: https://fly.vc/
- Research date / source access date: **2026-10-06**
- Status: **Complete research dossier; research only, no Adex changes.**
Fly Ventures is a Berlin-based first-check investor in technically difficult European startups. Its latest-known verified fund is the **€80 million Fund III, closed in December 2024**. Its current mandate is pre-seed and seed, including founders in the European diaspora in the US. Verified investments span autonomous driving, AI materials discovery, factory control, automated insect farming and AI infrastructure. **No verified neurotech investment found in the sources checked.** TimeTrace Labs is a relevant mental-health research adjacency, while Neuralk is general AI despite its name and a founder’s neuroscience training.
## Starting evidence: Adex and NFX Signal
Reviewed the exact-ID saved MCP Search snapshot `data/research/_sources/FlyVentures.adex.json`, retrieved 2026-10-06 at 19:29 UTC from the read-only localhost MCP endpoint. The record describes a Berlin firm founded in 2015, investing day zero to seed, with initial €1–4m checks in €2–10m rounds. Its structured investor-profile check minimum, maximum and sweet spot are null. Listed people are Gabriel Matuschka, Fredrik Bergenlid, Matt Wichrowski, Steven Tran, Meltem Tumer and Julian Bientzle. Previous investments include Fernride, Better Origin, Software Defined Automation, Orbital, Lakera, Neuralk, Pear Bio, Imvitro, Elea and TimeTrace Labs, plus enterprise software companies. These are starting claims, not independent verification.
The supplied [NFX Signal firm URL](https://signal.nfx.com/firms/fly-ventures ) returned an internal access error when directly opened. Searches for the firm and Gabriel Matuschka/Fredrik Bergenlid did not yield readable investor profiles. Guessed profile URLs https://signal.nfx.com/investors/gabriel-matuschka and https://signal.nfx.com/investors/fredrik-bergenlid likewise failed access; their existence is not confirmed. No Signal check-size, stage or personal-investment claims could be independently inspected. The research therefore relies on the official and transaction sources below rather than promoting inaccessible Signal claims to facts.
## Funds and stages
| Fund | Verified amount/status | Announcement and supporting source |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Fund III | **€80m closed**, not merely a target | Transaction counsel [YPOG](https://www.ypog.law/en/press/ypog-advises-fly-ventures-on-80-million-closing ), published 2024-12-20, confirms December 2024 closing. [Tech.eu](https://tech.eu/2024/12/06/fly-ventures-closes-eur80m-fund-iii-to-support-deeptech-founders-in-europe/ ), 2024-12-06, independently reports the close. |
| Fund II | **€53m**, 2020 fund generation | Same YPOG announcement confirms its work on this predecessor. Exact legal closing date not established here. |
| First fund | **US$41m closed**, 2017 reported amount | [Tech.eu](https://tech.eu/2017/12/21/fly-ventures-fund ), 2017-12-21. Retain reported dollar currency rather than assuming €41m. |
A search for newer 2025/2026 funds or Fund IV did not establish another close. Fund III is latest-known, not a guarantee that no later vehicle exists. Fund commitments are distinct from current AUM, deployable reserves and company check sizes. No reliable current aggregate AUM figure was verified; do not sum differently denominated historical funds and label the result AUM.
The official [How we invest](https://fly.vc/how-we-invest ) page (undated; accessed 2026-10-06) states pre-seed/seed, inception-stage investments, generally pre-product/pre-revenue, lead or co-lead role and selective follow-ons. It supports Europe and US founders with a European connection. AI, robotics, infrastructure and cybersecurity are interests rather than exclusive boundaries. Later rounds in historical records do not establish a growth-stage new-investment mandate.
The saved €1–4m initial-check range has historical reporting support, but current official mandate text read here gives no numeric range. Retain it as a dated historical claim pending a current firm confirmation. The 2017 fund reporting described materially smaller rounds, indicating strategy evolution rather than a fixed timeless ticket size.
## Named deep-tech investments
Technology classifications below are research judgments based on the described products. All amounts are company rounds, not Fly’s individual investment.
| Company / technology rationale | Firm attribution, date and round | Supporting URLs and caveats |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Wayve** — embodied AI and learned vehicle autonomy operating in physical environments | Fly’s official portfolio explicitly identifies its **2017 seed** investment. Initial Fly check/round amount not established. | [Fly portfolio](https://fly.vc/portfolio ), undated, accessed 2026-10-06. Strong direct attribution; portfolio status does not prove participation in each subsequent financing. |
| **Orbital Materials / Orbital Industries** — foundation models for materials discovery and industrial infrastructure | Fly identifies **2022 pre-seed** entry. | [Fly portfolio](https://fly.vc/portfolio ), undated, accessed 2026-10-06. YPOG’s [2024-12-20 announcement](https://www.ypog.law/en/press/ypog-advises-fly-ventures-on-80-million-closing ) independently identifies Orbital Materials among Fly investments. Treat these names as a likely continuity/renaming lead; review entity mapping before merging records. |
| **Fernride** — autonomous electric yard trucks combining human supervision and autonomy | Company history explicitly names Fly among **seed investors**; amount/date of this entry not given in the checked history. | [Fernride company history](https://fernride.com/company ), undated, accessed 2026-10-06. It also notes a $31m Series A in 2023; the history alone does not attribute every Series A participant, so do not infer Fly’s participation from that page. |
| **Better Origin** — automated insect farms, sensors/computer vision and biological conversion of food waste to animal feed | Company’s news index identifies **$3m financing from Fly, 2021-02-23**. Lead investor Balderton confirms Fly participated in the **$16m Series A, 2022-04-07**. | [Company news](https://betterorigin.co.uk/news/ ), dated 2021-02-23 entry; [Balderton announcement](https://www.balderton.com/news/better-origin-raises-16m-to-take-food-chain-back-to-its-sustainable-roots-with-its-ai-powered-insect-mini-farms-inspired-by-natures-waste-cycle/ ), 2022-04-07. This is physical agritech/automation, not ordinary SaaS. |
| **Software Defined Automation (SDA)** — virtualization and cloud management of industrial PLCs and factory controls | Company-issued announcement names Fly in **$10m seed, 2022-10-31**, led by Insight Partners. | [PR Newswire company release](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/software-defined-automation-fuels-growth-through-10m-seed-round-led-by-insight-partners-301662864.html ). Deep industrial infrastructure classification; some components are software tooling. |
| **Zymtrace** — low-level CPU/GPU profiling and autonomous optimization of AI workloads | Company release confirms **$8.5m seed, 2026-03-11**, Fly participant, plus previous **$3.7m pre-seed co-led by Fly and Mango Capital**, date undisclosed. | [Zymtrace-issued GlobeNewswire release](https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/03/11/3253797/0/en/Zymtrace-Secures-12-2M-to-Recover-Billions-in-Wasted-GPU-Spend-Through-Autonomous-Optimization.html ). Headline $12.2m is cumulative funding, not the seed round size. Technical infrastructure, with deep-tech classification less clear-cut than physical robotics. |
| **Neuralk-AI** — research-intensive tabular foundation models | Official company article confirms **$4m raised from Fly, StemAI and angels**, published **2025-02-04**. | [Company-hosted article](https://www.neuralk.ai/post/neuralk-ai-the-french-techs-next-promise-in-ai ). [Journal du Net](https://www.journaldunet.com/retail/1538835-neuralk-ai-leve-pres-de-4-millions-de-dollars/ ), 2025-02-04, describes pre-seed and an undisclosed debt component. Do not treat the full $4m as pure equity or a Fly check. |
**Lakera** is also verified: Fly’s [investment strategy page](https://fly.vc/how-we-invest ) dates its AI-security backing to 2022. This is specialist AI safety/security software; classify as technical AI infrastructure rather than automatically equating all cybersecurity SaaS with deep tech. Other saved businesses such as Claimsforce, hotel SaaS Thynk and recruiting tools are not counted solely because they use AI.
## Neurotech search and adjacent investments SHOW MORE
team@apexlogos.ai · 22 days ago
MATCH 
Compound
Orbital Inc.$50M · 2026
Pear Bio$— · 2023-05-15
Imvitro$2M · Unknown date
Point Nine Capital
TradeLink$— · 2022-06-21
claimsforce$8M · 2020-08-18
Finiata$— · 2017-12-14
Speedinvest
Fernride$50M · 2023-06-14
remberg$— · 2022-02-07
Balderton Capital
Better Origin$16M · 2022-04-07
GitGuardian$44M · 2021
Suranga Chandratillake
10x Founders
6 Degrees Capital
Zymtrace$8M · 2026-03-11
Andreessen Horowitz
Gitbutler$17M · 2026
Angular Ventures
Side$5M · 2017-07-07
Inovia Capital
Lakera$— · 2024-07-24
Kindred Ventures
BandLab$— · 2025-04-23
MMC Ventures
Notion Capital
Patrick Norris
Plural
Radical Ventures
Venture Guides
