Amino Collective Research
Investment Thesis
Amino Collective is a Berlin- and London-based institutional venture capital firm founded in 2020 by Manuel Grossmann, specializing exclusively in early-stage health and bio investments. The firm's guiding philosophy, expressed on its own site, is that "same same never leads to different" — they back founders who are "free and radical," scientists and entrepreneurs willing to venture into unproven scientific territory rather than optimize incrementally on known models. In practice this translates into a "TechBio" thesis: backing founder-led teams where a technology or computational platform is tightly coupled to scientific progress (drug discovery, synthetic biology, computational biology, RNA/gene therapy), rather than teams building a single therapeutic asset or a thin software wrapper around existing science.
Sector Focus
The portfolio clusters into four sub-themes: AI-driven drug discovery and computational biology (Cradle, Cosyne, Enveda, Inductive Bio, Theorema, Valid, Valinor), RNA/gene therapy and synthetic biology (KANO Therapeutics, Sensible Biotechnologies, Expression Edits, Lir, Serna Bio, Biomia, Kernal Bio), digital health and clinical infrastructure (Anima, Tandem, Lindus Health, HederaDx, Calibre, Vira, Junction), and genomics/proteomics/bio-infrastructure (Seqera, Portal, Molecule, REMATIQ). The firm does not appear to invest outside health and bio.
Stage Focus
Amino Collective invests at pre-seed and seed, per its own team page: "We've recently raised our second fund and invest in pre-seed and seed rounds. We make a select few, high-impact investments each year." Later rounds observed in the portfolio (e.g., Tandem Health's Series B, Rivia's Series A) are typically the firm continuing to participate as an existing investor rather than a new entry point.
Check Size
No check size is published on the firm's own site. Given a first fund of roughly €10M and a second fund of roughly €30–40M deployed across a deliberately small number of pre-seed/seed deals per year, checks are inferred to be modest relative to round size (roughly $250K–$3M), consistent with a syndicate participant rather than a sole or majority check-writer at seed.
Lead Tendency
Evidence is mixed. Amino Collective co-led Valinor's $13M seed round (December 2025) alongside CRV, Harpoon Ventures, and Pelion Venture Partners, but participated as one of several investors (not the lead) in Rivia's $15M Series A (led by Earlybird, March 2026), Modern Relay's $3M round (led by Point Nine, April 2026), and Tandem Health's $100M Series B (led by EQT's Scaleup Europe Fund, September 2026).
Recent Activity
The firm has been active through 2026:
- September 2026: Participated as an existing investor in Tandem Health's $100M Series B, led by EQT's Scaleup Europe Fund, alongside Kinnevik, Northzone, and Visionaries.
- April 2026: Backed Modern Relay's $3M round for enterprise AI agent coordination infrastructure, alongside Point Nine, Emerge, and Common Magic.
- March 2026: Participated in Rivia's $15M Series A for AI-driven clinical trial data infrastructure, led by Earlybird, alongside Defiant, Speedinvest, and Nina Capital.
- December 2025: Co-led Valinor's $13M seed round for multi-modal AI models predicting clinical trial outcomes, alongside CRV, Harpoon Ventures, and Pelion Venture Partners.
Portfolio Highlights
The current portfolio page lists at least 31 companies, all in health and bio. Notable names include Recursion (AI-driven drug discovery, publicly traded), Cradle (AI protein design), Enveda (ML/metabolomics drug discovery from medicinal plants), Seqera (genomic data orchestration), Tandem Health (clinician AI copilot, since raised a $100M Series B led by EQT), Rivia (AI clinical trial data infrastructure), Lindus Health (end-to-end clinical trials platform), and Junction (health data API for wearables/devices).
Team
- Manuel Grossmann — Founding Partner. Founded Amino Collective in 2020; based in Berlin.
- Nirmesh Patel — Investor.
- Fabian Theis — Venture Advisor.
- Jingkun Li — Head of Finance & Operations.
- Felicitas Hagen — Head of Marketing & Comms.
- Conny Gerth — Executive Assistant.
The firm also runs an unstructured "investment-team-fellow" program for individuals with promising futures in academia, entrepreneurship, and investing.
Decision Process
The firm describes itself as operating "with a focused team" rather than a large partnership, suggesting a small-group or partner-led decision process typical of an early-stage specialist fund of this size, though no formal process is published.
Founder Preferences
Amino Collective explicitly seeks founders who are "free and radical" — those who "don't assume to know it all" and are willing to break from normative scientific and business boundaries. The portfolio skews toward scientist-founders and technical teams building platforms at the edge of computational biology, synthetic biology, and AI-driven drug discovery, rather than purely commercial operators.
Geographic Focus
Headquartered in Berlin, Germany, with a second office in London, UK (1 Pancras Sq). The portfolio is primarily European (Germany, UK, Spain, Sweden) with selective US exposure (e.g., Modern Relay is Barcelona- and San Francisco-based; Valinor and Rivia have significant US operations).