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Zürich · LausanneDeep Tech · Pre-seed / Seed

Backing the scientists
turning Swiss research
into foundational companies.

Invariant Group is a venture capital firm partnering with founders spinning out of ETH Zürich, EPFL and Europe's leading deep tech institutions. We invest at day zero, when the science is hard, the team is small, and the ambition is real.

Submit your pitch Our thesis
Focus

AI · Robotics · Computing · Photonics · Bio · Climate

Stage

Pre-seed & Seed · €250k – €2M first checks

Geography

Switzerland first · Europe-wide

A fund built for founders of hard things.

Invariant Group exists because the best science doesn't fit in a 12-month roadmap, and the capital it deserves doesn't exist in most European term sheets. We're here to change that.

01

Science over narrative

We partner with teams whose edge is a genuine technical moat, not a story. We read the papers, run the references, and invest in defensibility that compounds.

02

Europe's research engine

ETH, EPFL, Max Planck, Cambridge, Oxford, TU Delft. Some of the world's best research is done on this continent. We believe the next generation of foundational companies will be born here.

03

Day-zero conviction

First-check partners for technical founders. We back pre-product, pre-incorporation, pre-anything. When the risk is real and the upside is generational.

04

Patient capital

Deep tech takes years, not quarters. We structure our fund, our reserves and our relationships to go the distance with founders building things that matter.

Where we invest.

We concentrate on sectors where a technical breakthrough can rewrite an industry, and where Swiss and European research institutions are producing world-class founders.

  • 01

    Artificial Intelligence

    Frontier models, inference infrastructure, agentic systems, scientific ML.

  • 02

    Robotics & Automation

    Embodied intelligence, industrial autonomy, novel actuation and perception.

  • 03

    Advanced Electronics

    Computing, sensing, communication. Hardware and full-stack software.

  • 04

    Photonics & Semis

    Silicon photonics, novel compute architectures, next-gen lithography.

  • 05

    Biotech & Health

    Computational biology, medtech, synthetic biology, diagnostics.

  • 06

    Climate & Energy

    Fusion, advanced materials, carbon removal, grid-scale innovation.

Research partners we love
  • ETH Zürich
  • EPFL
  • University of Zürich
  • Paul Scherrer Institute
  • Empa
  • University of Basel
  • TU Munich
  • Max Planck

How we work with founders.

We aim to be the partner we'd have wanted as founders ourselves: fast, honest, technically literate, and genuinely useful when the hard problems show up.

  1. 01

    First meeting

    A 30-minute call with a partner. No deck required. We want to understand the science, the founders, and the ambition.

  2. 02

    Technical deep dive

    We spend time with the research: papers, references, prior art. We involve technical advisors from our network when helpful.

  3. 03

    Conviction & terms

    Within two weeks of the first meeting, we give you a clear yes or no. If yes, a clean term sheet. No games.

  4. 04

    After the check

    Hands-on when it helps, out of the way otherwise. We support hiring, commercial introductions, follow-on fundraising and the long-haul stuff.

A small, concentrated portfolio.

We make few investments per year and back each of them with conviction. Most of our companies are currently in stealth. We'll share more as they're ready.

  • Stealth · Medtech diagnosisZürichPre-seed2025
  • Stealth · Silicon photonicsLausanneSeed2025
  • Stealth · Robotics foundation modelZürichPre-seed2024