Tenity Research
Investment Thesis
Tenity is a Zurich-based fintech venture capital firm and innovation platform. It backs early-stage founders at the convergence of fintech, AI and digital assets, and pairs each investment with access to more than 65 institutional partners across banking, insurance and digital assets. Its stated edge is what happens after the check: pilots, partnerships and commercial traction through banks, insurers and corporates that most early-stage investors cannot offer.
The firm publishes two theses. The first is the intelligence layer of financial services: autonomous finance (AI agents for trading, lending, treasury), AI-driven compliance (AML, KYC, regulatory reporting), decision intelligence (credit underwriting, market signals) and AI crossed with digital assets. Tenity says it has more than 30 AI and fintech portfolio companies. The second is on-chain infrastructure: regulatory tech, tokenization, onchain finance (custody, stablecoin rails, treasury) and AI crossed with web3. It says it has 48 digital asset and on-chain portfolio companies. It avoids teams that bolt a chatbot onto an existing product and looks for real workflow pain, enterprise readiness, defensible domain or regulatory moats and institutional distribution.
Stage Focus
Pre-seed to Series A and beyond. Its own materials say pre-seed through Series A+. Most of the visible activity is pre-seed and seed, often alongside the firm's Fin/Tech accelerator programs in Zurich, Singapore, Madrid, London and Istanbul.
Check Size
The site gives an initial ticket of $100K to $1.5M. For the Singapore accelerator, Tenity invests up to SGD 450K per startup through Tenity Incubation Fund II. An older OpenVC profile lists a EUR 50,000 / SGD 70,000 convertible note for about 2.5% equity, with follow-on of up to EUR 250,000 or SGD 350,000. That reflects the earlier program terms.
Lead Tendency
Tenity says it typically co-invests alongside trusted partners. Recent announcements fit this: it joined byFounders (lead) and Partech in Sumary, Fortino Ventures (lead) in Light Frame, and Redstone, Shapers and Inovia (leads) in Talentir.
Recent Activity
- November 2026: joined Light Frame's oversubscribed $5.1M seed (Swiss core banking and portfolio management software), led by Fortino Ventures.
- June 25, 2026: joined Talentir's EUR 4M round (AI-powered global payouts with stablecoin settlement), led by Redstone, Shapers and Inovia.
- Tenity's funding news page also lists Soource (EUR 3M seed), reltix (EUR 3M pre-seed), TwoWay (EUR 1.5M pre-seed), Yarken, HeyMax (US$11M Series A) and infinity.swiss (USD 3M round). Dates for these were not verified.
- November 18, 2025: co-invested in Sumary's $4.22M pre-seed (Denmark, AI bookkeeping), led by byFounders.
- August 4, 2025: announced investments in seven Batch 9 graduates of the Singapore Fin/Tech Accelerator.
- Keyrock, a Tenity portfolio company, reached a $1.1B valuation in a Series C.
The firm describes the investment vehicle as Tenity Incubation Fund II (INC II), launched in 2023 with UBS, SIX, Julius Baer and Generali as investors.
Portfolio Highlights
Tenity claims 200+ portfolio companies, 2 unicorns and $140M+ AUM, and says it has supported 1,600+ startups. The portfolio page at tenity.com/portfolio loads its company list with JavaScript, so the captioned read returned only site images and no company names. The companies listed in this profile come from Tenity's own news posts. Named examples: Keyrock, HeyMax, Sumary, Talentir, Light Frame, Soource, reltix, TwoWay, Yarken, infinity.swiss, and the Singapore cohort Cavos, Earlybird AI, GoBarakah, Momofin, PaperlessHospital, SalesHero.io and ZOLO. The portfolio page notes that the companies shown do not represent all of its investments.
Team
- Andreas Iten, CEO & GP: former CIO of SIX Financial Information, founded Tenity.
- Andrea Fritschi, Chief Investment Officer & Managing Partner: ex Swiss Re and BlackRock; drives venture strategy across fintech, insurtech and web3 in Europe and APAC.
- Luca Casuscelli, COO & Managing Partner.
- Michèle Richner, Managing Partner and VP Marketing & Comms.
- Kevin Chavanne and Pavel Jakovlev, Venture Partners.
- Maxim Leer, Principal and CVC Investment Lead.
- Guillermo Forteza, Investment Director (Europe).
- Oliver Sjöstedt, Principal, UK & Nordics Investment Lead.
- Matthias Herrmann, Head of Healthcare and Head of Digital Health Fund.
- Regional managing directors: Kaan Akin (UK), Cyrus Cruz (Singapore), Maximilian Plank (Hong Kong).
Decision Process
Not published. Deals are sourced through Tenity's accelerator programs, corporate innovation work and direct inbound; the site says AI fintech founders can apply directly with no program required.
Founder Preferences
"Conviction, clarity and ambition." Teams that move fast, think globally and build with purpose. Founders with firsthand domain experience are favored (for example Light Frame's founders previously ran Alpian, a Swiss private bank).
Geographic Focus
Europe and APAC, through six hubs: Zurich, Singapore, London, Madrid, Istanbul and Hong Kong (Tallinn is also mentioned). Some countries may require re-incorporation in the EU, Switzerland, UK or Singapore.
Background
Tenity began in 2015 as an open innovation initiative at SIX, the Swiss Stock Exchange, spun off in 2016, completed a management buy-out and rebranded in 2022, launched INC Fund II in 2023 and acquired Hackquarters in 2024 to expand into the UK and Turkiye. It runs a hybrid model: venture capital plus innovation services for corporates and governments.