Speedinvest Growth: When Early Founder Relationships Meet Growth Capital
At Speedinvest, we’ve always believed in backing ambitious founders earlier than most. Often, when there is little more than a slide deck and a bold conviction. We remain at the heart of generational companies, from the very start, and through the ups and downs of company building. Seed is in our DNA. Growth is a natural evolution of our story.
Founders don’t stop innovating once they hit product–market fit. As long-term partners to established companies like Bitpanda, Seqera, Gigs, and Tide, we understand what it takes to scale successfully. Building on the invaluable experience we’ve gained over the years, investing in growth is an organic continuation of our strategy.
Because we see most early-stage companies in Europe that go on to raise a Series A and invest in many of them, we know what works in Europe. We leverage that knowledge and our deep sector expertise to both support our portfolio companies with long-term capital and invest outside of our portfolio in high-growth companies we may have missed at the Seed stage.
Today, we have €294 million in growth capital to support category leaders from Series B through to pre-IPO. From the earliest stages to exit, we back the builders that will define the next generation of European innovation.
Why Growth, Why Speedinvest
We’ve been in the growth game for longer than you might think. We began in 2019 with the launch of our first growth vehicles, backing fintech scale-ups at Series A and B. Since then, we’ve expanded across all six of our specialised, sector-focused teams and have built a track record of 20+ growth investments, including Bitpanda (digital assets unicorn), Tide (SME banking unicorn), Yokoy (acquired by TravelPerk), and Cobee (acquired by Pluxee).
Our experience and expertise guide our approach. Europe has consistently suffered from the growth funding gap, where backing companies beyond the early stages becomes a challenge for the continent’s investors. Speedinvest is uniquely placed to continue investing from the earliest stages to exit, thanks to a number of key strategic advantages.
- Flexible by design: Every growth round is different, and so are the needs of the founders behind them. Sometimes we lead, sometimes we follow. We can come in via primary, secondary, or simply buying out options from existing employees. The point is not to fit founders into our model, but to adapt to each situation and to move quickly so they can stay focused on building, not fundraising.
- Access through seed: Relationships built early are our edge. With one of Europe’s largest seed portfolios, we’re already in the room with most of the companies that later raise a growth round. We know ~75% of growth-stage founders before the round even starts. That means long-term trust and often a shorter path to investment.
- Unique in structure: Our growth practice is not siloed. Led by Tom Lesche (Lead Partner), Wissam Nasreddine, and Varun Rekhi, the growth team benefits from the full force and collaboration of Speedinvest’s six vertical teams and 20+ early-stage investors. This unique set-up gives us both independence in decision-making and unmatched sector depth when underwriting complex businesses. Our strong sector-focused knowledge across 15 years of investing across areas of expertise allows us to both see the most relevant opportunities and establish crucial technical relationships.
Betting on Infrastructure as the Foundation of Scale
From Seed to scale, Speedinvest continues to back the compounders who will still be leading 10 years from now.
Yes, AI and stablecoins are reshaping industries while defence tech and frontier science are rewriting industrial playbooks. And, we’ve been backing these critical technological shifts for a long time now. Yet our core belief remains: the most durable growth opportunities lie in the infrastructure layer that powers them. Infrastructure is sticky, defensible, and compounds with powerful network effects.
Schematically, our growth thesis is built along the following lines:
- Finance, data & digital asset rails — modular banking systems, treasury tools, and ledgers that make fintech, stablecoins, and new forms of capital possible.
Speedinvest’s two cents: Money is becoming digital and programmable, whether through embedded finance, digital assets, or stablecoins. But none of this works without the underlying rails, i.e., the APIs, ledgers, and systems that let value move safely and seamlessly at scale. Europe needs to build these rails if it wants to compete globally.
- AI & software infrastructure — coding agent fleets, telco APIs, scientific data pipelines. We are backing the infrastructure through which applications and workflows can be deployed and scaled reliably with AI.
Speedinvest’s two cents: Models and applications may change, but they all rely on the same backbone of compute power, networks, and workflow tools. Without these layers, AI simply doesn’t scale.
- AI-powered industrial platforms — autonomous defence systems, IoT infrastructure, engineering software, and robotics. We invest in companies enabling large industrial ecosystems.
Speedinvest’s two cents: Europe is rich in talent and deep tech expertise, but it needs to fundamentally change industrial paradigms to remain competitive. Building flexible platforms that remove data silos and foster collaboration will be critical in the next few years.
And this is where we have already backed 20+ generational companies from Germany to Estonia to Africa:
- Bitpanda, Tide – financial infrastructure for millions of Europeans.
Founded in 2014 in Vienna by Eric Demuth, Paul Klanschek, and Christian Trummer, Bitpanda provides the infrastructure for millions of Europeans to invest and trade. Speedinvest led the first growth round in 2019, and we're committed to continuing our support for the long haul.
Founded in 2015 in London, Tide launched its mobile-first business finance platform to deliver current accounts and financial tools to small and medium-sized enterprises. Speedinvest has led or joined multiple rounds since the company’s Series B in 2019.
- Gigs – telecom infrastructure enabling any product to embed mobile connectivity.
Founded in 2020 in Berlin by Hermann Frank and Dennis Bauer, Gigs enables any tech company to launch its own mobile service through a “Telecom-as-a-Service” platform. Speedinvest led multiple rounds at the seed and growth stage.
- Pliant, Tuum, Ledgy – the financial rails powering fintech innovation.
Founded in 2020 in Berlin by Malte Rau and Fabian Terner, Pliant is a B2B fintech that lets businesses issue and manage Visa-powered physical and virtual credit cards across 11 currencies, automate spending workflows, and integrate seamlessly into financial systems. Speedinvest led its Series B in 2025..
Launched in 2019 in Tallinn, Estonia, by fintech veterans Juri Kirme, Rivo Uibo, Ove Kreison, and Jan Lakspere, Tuum offers a next-generation, modular, API-first core-banking platform. Speedinvest joined at the Series B stage in 2024.
Founded in 2017 by Yoko Spirig, Ben Brandt, and Timo Horstschaefer in Zurich, Ledgy streamlines equity and ownership management for private companies. Speedinvest led the secondary round during their Series B raise in 2022.
- ARX Robotics – defence infrastructure built in Europe, for Europe.
Founded in Munich, Germany, ARX Robotics develops autonomous ground systems (UGVs) and AI-driven software for European defense. Its platforms, shipped to European armed forces, feature a fully European supply chain and proprietary operating system (Mithra OS). Speedinvest led its Series A extension round in 2025.
- Flowdesk, One Trading – institutional-grade trading infra for digital assets.
Founded in 2020 in Paris (with offices in Singapore and North America) by Balthazar Giraux, Paul Bugnot, and Guilhem Chaumont, Flowdesk delivers Market-Making-as-a-Service (MMaaS) for web3 token issuers. Speedinvest backed the company at the Series A and Series B stages in 2022 and 2024.
One Trading is Europe’s regulated digital assets exchange for derivatives. Speedinvest has been backing the company since the Series A stage in 2023.
- Seqera — the workflow standard in bioinformatics, now powering 200+ pharma and research institutions
Established in Spain, Seqera provides cloud-first solutions to simplify complex scientific and data analysis pipelines, especially in pharma, genomics, and biotech. Speedinvest has been investing or leading every round since 2019.
- Moove – redefining mobility infrastructure, giving thousands of drivers across growth markets access to vehicles and livelihoods.
Based in Dubai, Moove is Africa’s first mobility fintech. It uses alternative credit scoring embedded in ride-hailing and logistics platforms to underwrite vehicle financing, selling, and financing up to 95% of vehicles within days. Speedinvest is continuously backing Moove after leading their Series A round in 2021.
In short, innovation cycles will come and go, but infrastructure will be the last one standing. This is why Speedinvest Growth invests horizontally across sectors, because whether it’s AI, fintech, or mobility, it all depends on the same resilient, scalable foundations. That’s the game we’re playing.
The most resilient companies in EMEA aren’t just building features, they’re building foundations. From fintech and telecom to mobility and defense, these are the pillars on which industries and economies scale. That’s where Speedinvest Growth puts its capital and conviction.— Markus Lang, General Partner
The Future
Since our first growth investments in 2019, our mission has always been to be the best partner for Europe’s most ambitious founders. Now with Speedinvest Growth, our growth story is just starting; our DNA hasn’t changed; it just scales beyond Seed.
The next generation of category leaders in EMEA won’t just create apps but will build the infrastructure that powers industries, economies, and even countries. And we’ll be right there with them.
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