Auxxo

Auxxo Research

Investment Thesis

Auxxo (full name: Auxxo Female Catalyst Fund) is a Berlin-based, sector-agnostic pre-seed and seed stage venture fund founded in 2019 with a single-minded mission: to close the funding gap for female founders in Europe. The fund backs the strongest pre-seed and seed stage female-(co-)founded startups on the continent, driven by the belief that equitable participation of women as founders and investors produces both social impact and strong returns. Auxxo explicitly targets companies with at least one female founder holding a minimum of 20% of the founder shares, and is otherwise industry-agnostic, having built a portfolio spanning climate tech, space, robotics, healthtech, fintech, and enterprise software.

Stage Focus

Auxxo invests exclusively at the earliest stages:

• Pre-seed and seed
• Typical initial check: €350,000-€800,000 for a 3-8% equity stake
• The firm explicitly describes itself as a "co-investment" fund rather than a lead investor, most often joining rounds alongside a lead (e.g. Cusp Capital leading Delta Labs' seed, LocalGlobe/BREEGA co-leading BioOrbit's seed)

Check Size

Typical investment: €350,000-€800,000 (~$380,000-$880,000), sized for a 3-8% ownership stake per the fund's own published criteria (vestbee.com coverage of the Fund II first close).

Lead Tendency

Auxxo follows/co-invests rather than leads. Its "Get funded" page lists "Co-investment approach" as one of its four headline investment criteria (alongside pre-seed & seed stage, pan-European, and industry-agnostic). Across the recent press-covered rounds reviewed (Delta Labs, BioOrbit, NanoStruct, Noxon), Auxxo appears as a participating investor alongside a lead or a syndicate of other early-stage funds and strategic investors (Cusp Capital, LocalGlobe, BREEGA, Seedcamp, HTGF, Bayern Kapital).

Recent Activity

Auxxo closed the final close of its second fund, Auxxo Female Catalyst Fund II, at €33.3 million (~$38.2 million) on 2026-09-01, a 75% step-up from its debut Fund I, which closed at €19 million in 2021. Fund II reached a first close of €26 million on 2025-07-21. The European Investment Fund (EIF) is the anchor investor in Fund II, joined by Aurum Impact, EnBW New Ventures, Cherry Ventures, and Speedinvest as limited partners, along with family offices, business angels and founders (more than 50% of Auxxo's LPs are women).

Alongside the Fund II final close, Auxxo also launched a pan-European Founder Matchmaking Platform to help founders find co-founders.

Fund II's disclosed portfolio (per the fund's own September 2026 announcement) already includes 11 companies: Emidat, Resolutiion, Stanhope AI, Kito AI, Marble Imaging, Noxon, SEAL Robotics, BioOrbit, NanoStruct, Delta Labs, and Radiogenesis.

Recent individually reported rounds:

• Delta Labs raised a €4.4M seed round led by Cusp Capital, with Auxxo participating (announced 2026-04-02)
• NanoStruct (Würzburg-based food-safety biotech) raised a €2.6M seed round with Bayern Kapital, HTGF and Auxxo (~May 2026)
• BioOrbit raised a £9.8M (~€11.4M) seed round co-led by LocalGlobe and BREEGA, with Auxxo, Seedcamp, Type One Ventures and 7percent Ventures participating
• Noxon raised a multi-million-euro round led by HTGF and Bayern Kapital, with Auxxo participating

Fund status: actively deploying — Fund II has already made 11+ investments per its own final-close announcement.

Portfolio Highlights

Auxxo's portfolio (drawn from its own portfolio page, https://auxxo.de/portfolio/, plus its Fund II announcement) spans several distinct clusters:

• Climate & carbon: Emidat (climate intelligence for construction/EPD certificates), Carbo Culture (biochar carbon removal), Greenlyte Carbon Technologies / GCT (direct air capture)
• Space & aerospace deep tech: BioOrbit (in-orbit drug manufacturing), Interstellar Lab (controlled-environment modules for farming and life support), Marble Imaging (high-resolution Earth observation satellites), Skyflow (automated drone network for public safety/industrial inspection)
• Robotics & bio-interfaces: Noxon (muscle-computer interface wearables), N Robotics (mobile robotics ecosystem), SEAL Robotics (autonomous container-securing robotics), Stanhope AI (generative AI for physical-world autonomous machines)
• Women's & family health: inne (at-home hormone/ovulation monitoring), XbyX (midlife female hormonal health), Moonrise (holistic women's health coaching), V&Me (baby/toddler meal delivery)
• Fintech & treasury: Anybill (digital receipt infrastructure), Rosaly (banking for blue-collar workers), Opto (fleet financing), Pile (startup/VC treasury management)
• AI-driven enterprise tools: Kito (AI discoverability data layer for brands), findIQ (AI knowledge transfer for industrial service technicians), Delta Labs (AI customer-simulation platform, Elaiia)
• Other notable names: BIOVOX (bioplastics for MedTech/Pharma), DUDE CHEM (greener API/chemical manufacturing), einwert (hybrid real-estate appraisal), Erblotse (digital inheritance directory), Exakt Health (MSK digital rehab), Filu (tech-enabled veterinary practices), Flexa (verified flexible-work job platform), Flown (deep work/focus toolkit), Kukua (African children's edutainment franchise), Recyda (packaging regulation compliance), Repath (climate risk/adaptation SaaS), Resolutiion (commercial-friction detection platform), ubiMaster (flat-rate tutoring benefit)

Auxxo's site also lists a separate "Angel Portfolio" of earlier, smaller angel checks made by the Auxxo team, several tagged "CLOSED" or "EXIT": Beams, Fides, Pile, Opto, Peers, Fermify, ChefCoco, Datacy, Diamontech, gitti, Flank, .RIDE, and Sproutl, plus additional named companies without a portfolio-page logo (Lilio, Localyze, One fıve, Qualifyze, Topos, Apryl, MiProbes).

Team

• Bettine Schmitz, General Partner — Former strategy consultant and product manager; scaled nearly 100 companies at Axel Springer Plug and Play; ~20 angel investments; trained mathematician
• Dr. Gesa Miczaika, General Partner — First employee at Blacklane; Venture Partner at Entrepreneur First; Deputy President of the German Startups Association; background in strategy consulting and startups
• Melanie Higgs, CFO & Operating Partner — 20+ years across consulting, corporate finance, and venture capital; based in Berlin
• Fabiola Hochkirchen, Initiating Partner — Co-founder of Auxxo; experienced angel investor with private equity background
• Alena Redeker, Principal — Sources female founders and manages fund operations; Master in Finance (Lisbon); prior experience in restructuring, M&A, and an early-stage Berlin startup
• Dr. Leopold von Schlenk-Barnsdorf, Advisor in Value Creation — Bridges family-business and startup/VC ecosystems; PhD from the Witten Institute for Family Business; 5th-generation shareholder of SCHLENK SE
• Christian Schad, Venture Partner — Serial entrepreneur (30+ years); co-founder of Planet A Ventures; founder of Hanseatic Help
• Dr. Sophie Pollok, Venture Partner — Former VC lawyer; built a B2B SaaS unicorn; active in gender-equality policy advocacy
• Magdalena Oehl, Venture Partner — Co-founder of TalentRocket (HR-Tech); active with the German Startup Association and Startup Teens
• Steffen Maas, Venture Partner — Former CEO of a data science consultancy; runs an AI-powered accelerator; drives fund automation and scouting

Decision Process

Auxxo operates as a partnership with two General Partners (Bettine Schmitz, Dr. Gesa Miczaika), a CFO & Operating Partner, an Initiating Partner, a Principal, and a bench of Venture Partners who support sourcing and portfolio work. Sourcing runs through an open "Get funded" intake form rather than a strict warm-intro requirement.

Founder Preferences

Eligibility is explicit and non-negotiable: the company must be founded by female founders (at least one female founder holding at least 20% of founder shares) and be based in Europe. Beyond that, Auxxo is industry-agnostic and has backed technical, scientific, and consumer founders alike — from a University of Zurich professor building AI customer-simulation tools (Delta Labs) to a former Redwire-adjacent space-drug manufacturing team (BioOrbit) to Munich neurotech founders (Noxon).

Geographic Focus

Pan-European. Portfolio companies are based in Germany (Berlin, Munich, Würzburg), the UK (London), and elsewhere in Europe; Auxxo itself is headquartered in Berlin.