ACE Ventures

ACE Ventures is proud to be featured in Tribune de Genève. In the article, Steve Salom, Partner at ACE Ventures, shares a clear conviction: Building global tech champions requires early, risk-taking capital and teams capable of turning ideas into products and products into companies. Switzerland has the talent, innovation, and long-term capital. To fully unlock this potential, one piece remains critical: more institutional investors stepping in earlier at scale. Today, too much of the value creation is still financed from abroad. If we want to build and retain global leaders, local capital must play a stronger role from the start. At ACE Ventures, this is our focus — backing founders early and supporting them in building lasting, global companies. Because if we don’t fund our champions, others will. #ACEVentures #VentureCapital #SwissVentureCapital

Welcome Scholé AI to the ACE Ventures portfolio! 💙 We’re incredibly proud to partner with Vinitra Swamy, PhD and Paola Mejia, PhD as we lead the $3M Seed round of Scholé AI, alongside The House Fund and Fund F. From day one, Vinitra and Paola stood out for the rare combination of deep ML-for-education research, great product instinct and a very grounded understanding of what actually breaks inside organizations when it comes to learning. With Scholé, they’re rethinking how learning should work in an AI-native world. As enterprises race to deploy AI, most are hitting the same wall: productivity doesn’t magically follow adoption. Learning is still static, generic, and disconnected from real work. Scholé flips that with an agentic, AI-native learning platform that adapts to each learner’s role, tools, and day-to-day context, delivering personalized learning in the flow of work. Born out of EPFL and University of California, Berkeley research, Scholé is already being used by teams at global organizations and piloted with leading Swiss enterprises, helping close the AI skills gap with short, adaptive, role-specific lessons that evolve in real time. Huge congrats to the entire Scholé team - we’re excited to build this next chapter together 🚀 Read more here: https://lnkd.in/eTh68rSF Steve Salom Alessandra Agnello Alessandro Calamia

We're proud to continue backing Sinpex as they announce their €10M Series A funding round led by BlackFin Capital Partners. Sinpex is building the category-defining KYB automation platform for Europe. Under the leadership of Dr. Camillo Werdich and Dr. Philipp Eska, the company has established itself as the market leader in Germany, serving leading financial institutions including KfW, OTTO Payments, SCAYLE Payments, and Bybit. The compliance landscape is at an inflection point. Regulation is getting tougher, expectations are rising, and manual KYB is no longer viable. The 2027 EU AML Regulation will require compliance teams across Europe to adopt more sophisticated, automated solutions. Sinpex's platform delivers audit-ready, enterprise-grade compliance while significantly reducing manual work. This funding will enable Sinpex to scale their AI-powered KYB and KYC automation platform across key European markets, helping compliance teams prepare for the 2027 EU AML Regulation with confidence. Congratulations to Camillo, Philipp, and the entire Sinpex team on this milestone. 🚀 Steve Salom, João de Saldanha

Building something truly ambitious is not comfortable. It demands endurance through pain and uncertainty. But also conviction and the ability to evangelise a vision long before it’s obvious. In this VC in Residence feature by Deep Tech Nation Switzerland, we reflect on what we look for in founders: conviction without rigidity, urgency without recklessness, and the resilience to navigate when things inevitably change. The article also explores why Switzerland is entering a new phase of maturity and why we believe is a great time to invest in Swiss tech founders and their global diaspora. Huge thanks to Amara Cespedes and the Deep Tech Nation team for the thoughtful conversation with Alessandra Agnello. Read the full piece here👇 https://lnkd.in/e-zU_rsa

GoCardless + Mollie We first backed GoCardless in 2011 during their YC batch when bank payments were still a contrarian bet in Europe. Watching them grow from three founders fixing a painful checkout problem to processing $130B+ annually has been remarkable Congrats to Hiroki Takeuchi and the entire GoCardless team, excited to see what comes next

What a fantastic kick-off to our new ACE Ventures Talks series! A big thank-you to Arthur Germain, Co-Founder of OneDoc, for joining us as the very first guest. His openness, ambition, and founder journey were the perfect way to launch this series, which is dedicated to spotlighting Swiss entrepreneurs who are proving that Switzerland can innovate and scale on a global stage.   ACE Ventures Talks aims to bring together people who believe in the power of Swiss talent and want to see it shine internationally. Last week’s event was a reminder of just how much potential lives here and how important it is to share these stories.   We are already looking forward to the next edition in Geneva, and to continuing to build a platform that elevates the founders shaping the future of Swiss innovation.   #ACEVenturesTalks #SwissFounders #Entrepreneurship #Innovation #Switzerland #StartupEcosystem

🚲 Huge congratulations to Stéphane Ficaja, Toussaint Wattinne and the entire Upway team on closing their $60m Series C! Upway is the global leader in certified e-bikes, driving the transition to sustainable urban mobility. They've already sourced, refurbished, and sold over 100,000 e-bikes across 9 countries, and this is just the beginning. Upway is building the future of urban mobility. By 2030, it will be sourcing, refurbishing, and selling 1 million e-bikes annually through 20 UpCenters in 15 countries, with a full suite of services to support riders at every stage. If that resonates with you too, they’re hiring: https://lnkd.in/eb8_i8pq Read more in the comments ⬇️

🤝 Fivetran is merging with dbt Labs Fivetran has long been the leader in data extraction and loading, replicating data from business applications like Salesforce or NetSuite into cloud warehouses. dbt Labs complements this by providing the transformation layer, turning raw data into analytics-ready models. Together, the two companies create a seamless platform that can extract, load, and transform data in one place, unifying the modern data stack for enterprises. 🔗 Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/dFr-9gqz

🚀 Veezoo raises $6M Series A to scale Agentic Analytics globally — welcome to our portfolio! We’re proud to announce that we led the $6M Series A of Veezoo, the most mature AI-native Agentic Analytics platform, alongside super angels including Mark T. Nelson (former CEO of Tableau) and Ted Kummert (former Chief Product Development Officer at UiPath). Veezoo was founded with a clear vision: every employee should be able to ask questions in plain language and instantly receive trusted, governed insights. Over the past years, the team has delivered on this vision at scale: ✨ Thousands of users at companies like AXA, Bayer, Baloise CH, BREITLING, Valora Group, and air up® rely on Veezoo every day. ✨ Recognized as a Gartner Cool Vendor (2024) in AI Models & Natural Language Technologies. ✨ Profitable and now expanding into Europe, the U.S., and Brazil, starting from NYC With this funding, Veezoo will accelerate go-to-market, scaling globally and further expand the Veezoo Knowledge Graph to ensure every answer remains accurate, governed, and trusted. We’re thrilled to back Marcos, João Pedro (JP), and Till as they redefine the future of analytics. 🔗 Read more on why we are partnering with Veezoo here: https://lnkd.in/eEaEdEGW Mark Kornfilt Alessandra Agnello

🚀 Excited to welcome Adaptyv to the ACE Ventures portfolio as they raise an $8M seed to power the future of protein design! We’re proud to announce that we led the $8M seed round in Adaptyv, the AI-powered protein design platform, alongside byFounders, Founderful, Acequia Capital, LongGame Ventures, and a group of world-class angels. Adaptyv was founded on a core belief: AI models for biology are only as good as the experimental data they’re trained on and the hypotheses they can test in the real world. Over the past year, the team has proven this at scale: 👉 More than 30 companies – from top pharma players to frontier AI labs and techbio startups – now use Adaptyv to validate their protein designs. 👉 Hundreds of experiments and 10,000+ proteins tested through the platform this year alone. 👉 A growing infrastructure that makes it possible for anyone to upload new designs and rapidly validate them. What impressed us most is Adaptyv’s rigorous approach to reengineering protein testing — a decades-old field still reliant on outdated processes. By building both the experimental and computational backbone for protein design, the team is tackling the critical bottleneck of access to high-quality data. With this funding, Adaptyv will accelerate hiring, scale infrastructure, and support the growing demand from companies pushing the frontiers of biology and AI. We’re thrilled to back Julian, Daniel and the Adaptyv team as they build the platform that is unlocking the next generation of protein discovery. 🔗 Read more about what Adaptyv is building here: https://lnkd.in/e6CipyDe Alessandra Agnello Steve Salom