Look Up Ventures Research
Investment Thesis
Look Up Ventures (LUV) is a Copenhagen-based venture firm founded in 2022. Its homepage says it backs purpose-driven founders across AI, software and deeptech, with pragmatic and systemic solutions to the world's biggest challenges. The firm describes itself as founders, operators and investors who honor fast-scale potential and real-world results, and who speak the unpleasant truth in change-resistant arenas to make decision-makers look up. Its stated investment areas span secure and sovereign AI for governments, protein production and food systems, energy and materials, transport, and carbon management, all framed as supporting more resilient systems. Earlier descriptions (Crunchbase and directory snippets) framed the firm around the climate emergency and biodiversity loss; the current site has broadened to AI and software applied to real-world problems, which matches the recent Intric and AgentWork additions.
Stage Focus
The firm's own site does not state a stage. Third-party profiles describe pre-seed to Series A investing in deeptech and hardware start-ups (Crunchbase snippet), and Tracxn lists entry rounds as Seed. PitchBook records early-stage VC and seed rounds. The working read is pre-seed and seed first checks with occasional later participation. Confidence is moderate because it comes from third parties.
Check Size
Not disclosed on the site or in the sources read. No check size range is submitted.
Lead Tendency
Unknown. Tracxn shows Look Up Ventures alongside XAnge, LocalGlobe and other funds in its Sirona Technologies seed, and PitchBook lists co-investors including byFounders, Molten Ventures, XAnge and The Footprint Firm. That points to a participant or co-lead role in syndicates, but no source confirms who led.
Recent Activity
PitchBook lists 13 investments. The most recent is Intric (Swedish AI platform), a seed round dated 6 February 2026. Before that: Alice (7 May 2025), Ikkaton (25 April 2025), Sirona Technologies (26 June 2024), The Rock Flour Company (March 2024), Huminly (December 2023), C16 Biosciences (November 2023), Rubi Laboratories (March 2023), Altruistiq (June 2022) and Ento Labs (March 2022). Tracxn reports no investment in 2026 as of its August 2026 snapshot, which conflicts with PitchBook's February 2026 Intric date. Fund status is treated as actively deploying because PitchBook marks the firm as actively seeking new investments and the site lists AgentWork and Intric as recent additions.
Portfolio Highlights
The site lists 14 companies: C16 Biosciences (biomanufactured oils and fats), Sirona Technologies (direct air capture), The Rock Flour Company (soil and agricultural inputs), Huminly, Arkeon (biotech; PitchBook records a liquidation exit in May 2025), Ento Labs, RUBI (carbon-captured textiles), Reshape Biotech, Ikkaton, Altruistiq (sustainability data), Seasony, Alice, Intric and AgentWork. PitchBook shows two exits, Arkeon (liquidation) and Seasony, with no disclosed sizes.
Team
- Tommy Ahlers, Founding Partner: founder and former CEO of Podio and ZYB, investor for about 12 years, former Danish Minister of Higher Education and Science and climate speaker; network across policy, science and corporations.
- Nicolaj Reffstrup, Founding Partner: founder, former CEO and now responsibility leader at Ganni; global sustainability leader and investor with experience scaling brands from zero to $200M profitable revenue.
Decision Process
A two-partner firm, so decisions most likely sit with the two founding partners. The site gives no process detail. Not submitted as a structured field.
Founder Preferences
The firm says it backs purpose-driven founders who build pragmatic, systemic solutions and have real-world, fast-scale potential. It values operator experience and plain talk with incumbents and regulators.
Geographic Focus
Based in Copenhagen. The portfolio is international: Denmark, the UK (Altruistiq), the US (C16 Biosciences, RUBI), Belgium (Sirona Technologies), Sweden (Intric) and elsewhere in Europe. Tracxn names Denmark, the United States, Austria and three more locations.
Gaps
The site is a single page with no portfolio, team or news subpages (they return 404). Stage per company, check size, fund size and AUM are not disclosed; none is submitted. Crunchbase blocked automated reads.