Cherry Ventures
About Cherry Ventures
Cherry Ventures is Europe’s leading early-stage venture capital firm led by a team of founders and operators with experience building fast-scaling companies such as Spotify, Zalando, and Uber. The firm backs Europe's boldest founders, usually as their first institutional investor, and supports them in everything from go-to-market strategy, scaling the business, and team formation across all crucial stages in their journey. We look for founders with a vision to create revolutionary technologies - whether it’s AI, healthcare, robotics, consumer, or others - that impact society and change the world for the better. Cherry has invested in the pre-seed and seed stages of over 130 companies across Europe, including Flix, Auto1, Flaschenpost, Amboss, Manual, Numa, Moss, The Exploration Company, Qualifyze, Swap, Dash0, Proxima Fusion and Tacto. Cherry has offices in Berlin, London, and Stockholm. cherry.vc Per Crunchbase, Cherry Ventures has made 280 investments, 102 as lead investor across 163 portfolio companies, with 30 exits including 1 IPOs.
Filip Dames and Christian Meermann founded Cherry in 2012, first as an angel fund. Cherry's site lists its institutional funds as Cherry II (€150 million, 2016), Cherry III (€175 million, 2019), Cherry IV (€320 million, 2022) and Cherry V ($500 million, 2025). Cherry IV was first announced as a €300 million fund, and the firm said then that about 60% of its capital was reserved for follow-on investments. Cherry also launched a $34 million Cherry Crypto I fund in 2026, according to F4 Fund. Cherry does not publish which partner leads AI, so this page does not name one. Dames and Meermann are the founding partners.
Cherry does not run a separate AI fund. It invests across sectors with seed as its core stage, and AI shows up in many of its recent deals. Seedtable counts 48 of 145 staged deals as Artificial Intelligence. Recent rounds on the Lounge deals desk include Zaro ($5.1M pre-seed, June 2026), INXM (€5.7M pre-seed, June 2026) and Sphinx ($7.1M seed, July 2026), which Cherry led. Cherry also joined rounds led by others, such as Cortea (€12M seed, led by Dawn Capital) and telli ($15M seed, led by redalpine). Cherry says it partners with OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS, Google, HubSpot, Notion and Stripe to give portfolio companies preferential terms.
Cherry says it invests from pre-seed to Series A, with seed as its core stage, and often before a company has a product or revenue. Its site gives a typical check of €2 million to €10 million and says it makes around 10 to 12 seed investments a year. It likes slightly larger seed rounds and reserves more than 50% of each fund for follow-on financing. It invests across Europe and is not focused on one country. Third-party sites quote other ranges, such as $2M to $7M on F4 Fund. Treat those as estimates.
- Zaro: shared context layer for enterprise AI agents; $5.1M pre-seed led by Cherry, June 2026
- INXM: AI-powered process execution platform for enterprise automation; €5.7M pre-seed led by Cherry and Redstone, June 2026
- Sphinx: KYC and AML software; $7.1M seed led by Cherry, July 2026
- Cortea: AI quality layer for audit firms; €12M seed led by Dawn Capital with Cherry, June 2026
- telli: AI agents for customer-facing operations; $15M seed led by redalpine with Cherry, July 2026
- Manifold: $8M seed, March 2026
- Structured AI: computer vision; $4.2M seed, June 2026
- Dash0: $110M Series B, March 2026; F4 Fund lists it under developer tools and AI infrastructure
- Black Forest Labs and Legora: named by F4 Fund as Cherry AI portfolio companies; round details not confirmed here
- cherry.vc/about
- seedtable.com/investors/cherry-ventures
- f4.fund/firms/cherry-ventures
- techcrunch.com/2022/01/20/berlins-cherry-ventures-launches-fourth-fund
- medium.com/cherryventures/investing-in-the-future-f66317befc0d
- leadiq.com/c/cherry-ventures/5a1d9dbb23000053008d9c77
- parsers.vc/fund/cherry.vc
- vcbacked.co/directory/investors/cherry-ventures
Investing activity
Cherry Ventures has made 280 investments according to Crunchbase across 163 portfolio companies, and has led 102 rounds and seen 30 exits, 1 of them by IPO.
Cherry Ventures appears in 9 AI deals tracked by the AI Lounge deals desk, rounds totalling $68M, and led 3 of them. The rounds are mostly Seed and Pre-seed, with a median round size of $7M and the largest at $15M. The most recent are RobCo (Secondary, $40M, Oct 2026), Spiich (Seed, €3M, Sep 2026) and telli (Seed, $15M (EUR 13.1M), Jul 2026).
Cherry Ventures most often invests alongside Y Combinator, Charlie Songhurst, Sequoia Capital and European Tech Collective, and the companies it backs on AI Lounge are mostly in AI and Industrial robotics / physical AI.
Deals
Frequently asked questions about Cherry Ventures
Does Cherry Ventures invest in AI startups?
Yes. Cherry invests across sectors, and AI is one of the largest categories in its recent deals. It led Zaro, INXM and Sphinx in 2026.
How much does Cherry Ventures invest per company?
Cherry's site says it typically invests between €2 million and €10 million. It makes about 10 to 12 seed investments a year and keeps most of each fund for follow-ons.
What stages does Cherry Ventures invest in?
Cherry invests from pre-seed to Series A, with seed as its core stage. It often invests before a company has a product or revenue.
How big is Cherry Ventures' latest fund?
Cherry V is $500 million and was raised in 2025, according to Cherry's site. Cherry IV, raised in 2022, was €320 million.
Does Cherry Ventures lead rounds?
Sometimes. Cherry led Zaro, INXM and Sphinx in 2026. It also joined rounds led by others, including Cortea and telli.
What AI companies has Cherry Ventures invested in?
Cherry Ventures's AI investments include Spiich, telli, Sphinx, Cortea, Zaro, Structured AI, INXM and Manifold. The 9 rounds on AI Lounge are listed on this page with amounts, dates and co-investors.
Where is Cherry Ventures based?
Cherry Ventures is based in Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
What stage does Cherry Ventures invest at?
In the rounds tracked on AI Lounge, Cherry Ventures has invested at Seed and Pre-seed, with a median round of $7M. Cherry Ventures led 3 of those rounds.
Who does Cherry Ventures co-invest with?
Cherry Ventures's most frequent co-investors on AI Lounge are Y Combinator (3 deals), Charlie Songhurst (2 deals), Sequoia Capital (1 deal), European Tech Collective (1 deal) and Lightspeed Venture Partners (1 deal).
How can founders reach Cherry Ventures?
Founders on AI Lounge can see Cherry Ventures's contact details in AI Investor Contacts (paid plans), check for a warm introduction through members who worked with the firm under Warm Paths, and add Cherry Ventures to their Investor Pipeline to track the conversation.