Uplift Ventures today announces the launch of its inaugural €100 million venture capital fund, dedicated to backing Europe's next generation of deeptech founders.

The fund addresses one of the biggest financing gaps in the European ecosystem: supporting ambitious deeptech companies at the late Seed and Series A stage, where many breakthrough technologies still struggle to attract conviction capital despite growing investor interest in the sector.

Uplift Ventures plans to back up to 20 startups and select deeptech funds from the fund, creating a unique global network that benefits founders long after the initial investment. Uplift Ventures has backed more than 30 startups across multiple technology sectors.

The VC firm focuses on companies building transformative technologies in Physical AI, Energy, Enterprise AI, and Logistics, with investments primarily in Europe and the US.

Christian Noske joins Uplift Ventures as General Partner, complementing the leadership team alongside Kerk Wichmann, Christina Hammes and Maike Steding. He brings more than a decade of experience investing in deeptech companies across Europe. Prior to joining Uplift Ventures, he led European investments at NGP Capital and was a founding partner at BMW i Ventures and Alliance Ventures.

Throughout his career, he has backed companies including The Exploration Company, ANYbotics, Tekion, Dataloop and WeRide. He is also the host of the leading deeptech podcast “DeepTech Unleashed”.

Much of today's investment activity in deeptech remains concentrated in later-stage mega rounds or a small number of highly visible companies. Uplift Ventures was built on the conviction that many of tomorrow's category leaders require dedicated partners long before reaching that stage.

The team takes a flexible investment approach, acting as lead investor, co-lead or participating investor depending on what best serves founders and the financing round.

"We've spent years investing in deeptech and have seen both the many ways these companies can fail and what it takes to build exceptional outcomes”, said Christian Noske, General Partner at Uplift Ventures.

The fund is backed by Jungheinrich as a long-term commitment to share Uplift Ventures' investment strategy and purpose to back European deeptech innovation.

Lead image: Kerk Wichmann, Christina Hammes, Maike Steding and Christian Noske, Uplift Ventures.

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