C

Cherry Ventures

VC Firm·Berlin, Germany·$500M (Fund V, 2025); ~$1B total AUM

Cherry Ventures is a European early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2012 by Filip Dames and Christian Meermann, headquartered in Berlin with offices in London and Stockholm. The firm invests at pre-seed and seed stages in European startups across software, fintech, climate tech and deep tech, backing founders with operational experience from its team of former operators at companies like Zalando and Spotify. Cherry's portfolio of over 150 companies includes notable exits such as FlixBus, Auto1 Group and deep tech bets like Proxima Fusion.

Focus Areas

B2B SoftwareFintechIndustrialsHealth TechClimate TechConsumerDeep TechSpace Tech
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Portfolio

1 company in our directory

Proxima Fusion logo

Proxima Fusion

Hiring
Energy·Series A

Proxima Fusion was founded in April 2023 as a spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, bringing together scientists and engineers from IPP, MIT, and X Development. Co-founded by Dr Francesco Sciortino (CEO, PhD in plasma physics from MIT) and Dr Lucio Milanese (COO, PhD in theoretical plasma physics from MIT, formerly McKinsey), the company is developing quasi-isodynamic stellarators combined with high-temperature superconducting magnets to build the world's first commercial stellarator fusion power plant. Proxima has partnered with RWE and the Free State of Bavaria on a planned €2B facility near Munich. The company has raised €200M to date, including a Series A led by Cherry Ventures and Balderton Capital with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Plural, and others. Proxima maintains a UK presence at the Culham Campus and a London-registered entity.