Lunar Ventures

Lunar Ventures is a Berlin-based deep-tech venture capital firm that backs technical founders at the earliest stages of their journey. The firm made its name investing in transformative technologies before they entered the mainstream—putting money into fully homomorphic encryption before anyone in venture cared about it, into the Transformer architecture before large language models existed, and into local-first software before it had a name.

In May 2025, Lunar Ventures closed its second fund, a €50 million vehicle targeted at pre-seed deep-tech startups across Europe and the United States. The firm plans to deploy this capital across 25 to 30 companies, writing initial checks of €750,000 to €1 million per startup. Fund I, raised in 2021, backed 25 companies including Deepset, Zama, Electric SQL, Molecule, and Hathora—several of which went on to raise follow-on rounds from top-tier US investors including Upfront Ventures and Spark Capital.

What sets Lunar Ventures apart is that its team includes engineers and researchers—not just finance professionals—so they can evaluate complex deep-tech theses that most VC firms cannot assess at the pre-seed stage. They look for companies building at the intersection of software and hard science, and they invest before the market has validated the opportunity. That means they are comfortable with technical risk and scientific uncertainty that would cause other investors to pass.

This guide covers Lunar Ventures's investment thesis, portfolio, check sizes, geographic focus, and practical advice for getting a meeting with the firm.

Lunar Ventures's investment thesis rests on a simple conviction: the most transformative companies are built by technical founders working on hard problems before the broader market understands the opportunity. The firm explicitly looks to invest before hype, not after it has already drawn a crowd.

Their tagline—"Hard problems. Real tech. Zero hype."—captures this orientation. Lunar Ventures does not invest in business model innovation or consumer apps. They invest in companies building foundational infrastructure: new cryptographic primitives, AI frameworks, biotech tools, quantum computing systems, autonomous platforms, and scientific computing infrastructure.

The firm's current areas of focus include AI infrastructure and enterprise language model tooling, privacy-enhancing technologies (notably homomorphic encryption), technology biology and AI-driven drug discovery, cloud infrastructure for the next generation of computing, agentic process automation, data platforms purpose-built for multi-agent systems, and decentralized science. These are not arbitrary categories—they reflect the partners' own technical backgrounds and the areas where they have built genuine evaluation capability.

Lunar Ventures evaluates demos over commercial validation. At the pre-seed and seed stages, they do not expect portfolio companies to have significant revenue or even product-market fit. Instead, they assess the technical soundness of the approach, the founders' depth of expertise, and whether the technology being built is genuinely differentiated. This differs sharply from growth-oriented VCs who invest based on traction metrics.

The firm prefers to lead or co-lead rounds, though they are also comfortable being the first institutional investor in a company. Their value-add is not just capital—it includes R&D strategy setup, narrative refinement for subsequent fundraising, and introductions to their network of technical founders and engineers who have built and scaled deep-tech companies before.

Lunar Ventures Fund II, closed in May 2025 at €50 million, is the firm's current active vehicle. The firm plans to make 25 to 30 initial investments from this fund, with check sizes ranging from €750,000 to €1 million at the pre-seed and seed stages.

These initial checks are designed to get founders from their earliest days—the phase where a company may have a prototype, a small team, and a compelling technical vision—through to a point where they have demonstrated product validation and can raise a larger Series A. Lunar Ventures actively supports portfolio companies through subsequent rounds, often participating in follow-on financing as their companies grow.

Fund I, raised in 2021, was a $46 million vehicle that backed 25 companies. Several of those companies—notably Zama, Deepset, Electric SQL, and Molecule—subsequently raised growth rounds from prominent US venture firms, demonstrating that Lunar Ventures's early-stage bets have attracted institutional follow-on capital. Hathora, another Fund I company, was acquired by Fireworks AI in March 2026, delivering an exit.

The average seed-stage round size in Lunar Ventures's portfolio has been approximately $2.96 million, though the firm's own initial check is at the smaller end of that spectrum. This means founders should plan for subsequent fundraising shortly after Lunar's initial investment, with a clear milestones-based path to a Series A.

Lunar Ventures invests across Europe and the United States with an approximate 80/20 split. Within Europe, the firm has been particularly active in Germany, the United Kingdom, and broader Western Europe. The US allocation is directed at underserved regions—specifically not Silicon Valley, which the firm views as over-served and over-valued relative to the technical talent and opportunity that exists elsewhere.

This geographic stance reflects Lunar Ventures's belief that deep-tech innovation is not confined to the San Francisco Bay Area, and that the best technical founders often have compelling reasons to build outside the traditional startup hubs. The firm operates a remote-friendly model from Berlin, with team members scattered across Europe.

For founders building outside the major US coastal tech hubs, Lunar Ventures may be a more natural fit than pure US-market VCs, because the firm's partners understand European talent markets, regulatory environments, and the particular dynamics of building deep-tech companies in European ecosystems.

Lunar Ventures's portfolio spans companies building infrastructure across AI, biotech, space, quantum computing, and developer tools. Some of the most notable include:

Zama—building homomorphic encryption tooling for AI and blockchain applications. Zama reached unicorn status, making it the first fully homomorphic encryption company to achieve that milestone. Lunar Ventures invested at the earliest stage.

Deepset—providing sovereign AI infrastructure for enterprises. Deepset raised a $30 million Series B in 2023 and has become a significant player in the enterprise AI tooling space.

Electric SQL—a data platform designed for multi-agent systems, giving AI agents reliable access to structured enterprise data.

Molecule—operating in the decentralized science space, building infrastructure for scientific research coordination and funding.

Otera—focused on agentic process automation, enabling businesses to deploy autonomous agents in enterprise workflows.

Additional portfolio companies include Axiom Therapeutics (AI drug discovery for covalent medicines), Bruin (AI-powered data analyst), iLoF (photonic AI for drug discovery), Lodestar (orbital security and space systems), Neurolabs (image recognition for retail), Semiqon (silicon-based quantum computing), Wasp (full-stack framework for the AI era), Wnstn (AI for capital markets), and Emm (smart women's health technology), among others.

The portfolio also includes several stealth companies working on autonomous maritime sensing, foundation models for physics, hypersonic cargo systems, and teleoperated semi-humanoid robotics—sectors that illustrate Lunar Ventures's appetite for genuinely frontier hard tech.

Lunar Ventures evaluates companies on several dimensions that differ from mainstream VC criteria. The starting point is always the technical foundation: Is the technology genuinely novel and difficult to replicate? Does it rely on proprietary insights, novel algorithms, or scientific breakthroughs that give the company a durable competitive advantage?

The team and their depth of expertise in the problem domain matter enormously. Lunar Ventures wants to back founders who understand the problem space better than anyone else—often because they have spent years doing academic research or building technical systems in the relevant field. Generalist founders with domain experience are less compelling than those with deep, specific technical credibility.

Market size matters, but not in the way it matters to growth-stage VCs. Lunar Ventures wants to see that the technology, if successful, addresses a large enough problem that the company could become very significant. They are not looking for incremental improvements to existing markets; they are looking for the potential to create or redefine large markets.

Founder alignment and long-term commitment are evaluated alongside technical capability. The firm asks: Does the founding team have a coherent hiring plan? Is the product direction clear? Can the founders articulate why this technology matters now and what they are building toward? Lunar Ventures also pays attention to whether founders have the interpersonal density to build and lead high-performing technical teams.

One thing Lunar Ventures does not require is commercial traction. The firm has built its process around evaluating technical demos, prototypes, and early research rather than revenue. For founders who already have revenue, that is not a disadvantage—but the absence of revenue will not disqualify a company if the technical thesis is strong.

Warm introductions are by far the most effective way to get a meeting with Lunar Ventures. The firm is most responsive to referrals from portfolio founders, technical researchers, and other investors who can vouch for the credibility of a founding team. A recommendation from a credible technical source carries more weight than any cold outreach.

If a warm introduction is not available, cold outreach through the firm's website is an option, but success rates are much lower. Lunar Ventures receives a large volume of inbound interest. To stand out, cold submissions need to clearly articulate what the technology does, why it is technically differentiated, and why the founders are uniquely positioned to build it. Generic pitch language and business-speak are likely to result in a polite pass.

Founders who have published technical work—research papers, open-source contributions, patents, or conference talks—should highlight these. Lunar Ventures's partners are technically oriented and will evaluate the underlying work directly rather than relying solely on the pitch narrative.

The firm's investment process typically moves from initial outreach to a first call with one of the partners, followed by a technical review of the underlying product or research if the initial conversation goes well. Because the firm invests at the pre-seed stage, they are accustomed to making decisions based on early-stage work and will engage seriously with companies that are still in prototype or research phase.

Founders should be prepared to discuss the technical details of their approach openly. Lunar Ventures asks probing technical questions and expects founders to be able to answer them. The firm is not trying to trip founders up—they are trying to assess whether the technology is sound and whether the founders truly understand what they are building.

While Lunar Ventures invests at the pre-seed stage and does not require commercial traction, founders should still have a clear-eyed view of their financial position. Understanding burn rate, runway, and the key milestones that the next round of capital will fund is expected. Investors at this stage want to see that founders are rigorous about their internal planning, even if the company is years from profitability.

For deep-tech companies, the financial model often looks different from a typical SaaS business at the same stage. Hardware, scientific research, and engineering-heavy development can have different cost profiles and timelines to revenue. Founders should be prepared to explain their path to sustainability in terms that reflect the actual economics of their sector.

Engaging a fractional CFO or financial advisor who understands deep-tech fundraising can help founders present a credible financial narrative to investors. Lunar Ventures will probe founders on their assumptions, and founders who cannot defend their financial models credibly will struggle to build trust with technical investors, even if the underlying technology is strong.

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