One of Europe’s oldest deep-tech specialists is opening a London office, and pitching it as a fresh expansion into new territory. Companies House tells a slightly different story. Vsquared Ventures, founded in Munich and known for raising one of Europe’s largest early-stage deep-tech funds, quietly incorporated its UK entity back in October 2024, some 18 months before it said a word in public.
The firm has been building in London far longer than the announcement lets on.
The move puts Vsquared, which manages more than €450m across nearly 50 companies in 13 countries, in direct competition with two London-native giants: Atomico, the firm founded by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström with $4.7bn under management, and Balderton Capital, which has raised $4.5bn since 2000. Its pitch against them is focus.
Where the incumbents back deep tech as one slice of a broader portfolio, Vsquared writes only deep-tech cheques, from pre-seed to Series A across AI, robotics, quantum, new space, energy and tech-bio, and has done so since before the category drew mainstream money. Its portfolio already includes Isar Aerospace, the quantum unicorn IQM, the encryption firm Zama and NEURA Robotics.
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The timing of going public is not incidental. London pulled in more than £7bn of venture capital in the first quarter of 2026, its strongest in four years, driven by AI, advanced computing, climate and defence. European deep tech drew €15bn in 2024, nearly a third of all venture capital on the continent, with London taking $2.2bn of that, second only to Paris.
For a fund that preaches building ‘global category leaders from Europe’, the subtext is pointed: even a champion of Munich engineering now feels it needs a London base for capital, markets and talent.
The office is led by Lise Rechsteiner, a general partner whose background is telling. She co-founded the Norwegian deep-tech fund Propagator Ventures and holds a PhD from ETH Zurich, Nordic and pan-European roots rather than a Munich LP-relations posting, which suggests Vsquared wants London winning deals, not just raising money.
A simultaneous reshuffle, with several promotions to investment partner and a new platform-and-communications lead, points to a firm preparing for a bigger operational footprint.
Whether London becomes a genuine second hub or simply a capital-raising base will come down to whether a specialist can out-hustle the generalist giants, Atomico and Balderton, on their own turf.
The opening is real: the European Commission earmarked €1.4bn for deep tech in its 2026 innovation programme, governments are treating the sector as industrial policy, and the field is projected to generate more than $5tn in global economic impact over the coming decade.
Vsquared has given itself an 18-month head start. The question Rechsteiner now has to answer is whether it was enough.
