Who we are
About ellipsis
Switzerland, Sweden and Luxembourg
ellipsis Ventures is a European venture capital fund that invests from a founder's first check through seed, with a focus on the earliest stage, in companies where AI is the core of the product. The General Partners sit in Switzerland and Sweden and the fund is domiciled in Luxembourg. It was founded by Yariv Adan and Matthias Dantone, and it is run as an AI-native organisation: two General Partners, supported by Venture Partners and a set of AI systems for sourcing, diligence and operations, doing the work of a much larger team.
History
- 2023. Four Google and ETH Zurich alumni, Yariv Adan, Matthias Dantone, Juergen Galler and Thomas Hofmann, start co-investing in early-stage AI companies from their own capital and network. More than ten companies are backed this way.
- November 2024. The syndicate becomes ellipsis Venture, with Yariv Adan and Matthias Dantone as Founding General Partners and Juergen Galler and Thomas Hofmann as Venture Partners.
- 2025. Robert MacKenzie (robotics) and Nicholas Heller (UK) join as Venture Partners. The Campus Scout programme and the Future Founders Platform (with s16VC) launch. ellipsis is selected among the top 20 emerging managers at Slush x RAISE.
- March 2026. Ellipsis Venture I, a USD-denominated fund, holds its first closing and rolls in the syndicate's portfolio. The fund leads its first round in June 2026.
What we believe
We coined the phrase "commoditized magic" in 2024 to describe where AI is going: the technology is magical, unlocking capabilities that were previously impossible, yet it is almost completely commoditized by frontier models. Intelligence is becoming a utility. Value moves away from whoever owns the model and toward the companies that put it to work behind a moat that does not commoditize: proprietary data, rare expertise, or problems hard enough to justify expensive intelligence. We invest in "AI unlockers", products that were impossible before AI, and in the AI-first infrastructure that Big Tech will not build. The full checklist is on the investment criteria page.
The team
Two General Partners and four Venture Partners. Yariv Adan spent 17 years at Google, where he co-founded Google Assistant and Google Lens and led Applied GenAI at Google Cloud. Matthias Dantone co-founded and led Fashwell, sold to Apple, and holds a PhD in machine learning from ETH Zurich. The Venture Partners bring 1plusX, Swisscom, ETH, ANYbotics and Google backgrounds, and a base in London.
Programmes
- Campus Scouts: students across European universities, with a UK chapter since 2026, scout AI and deep-tech startups with us.
- Future Founders Hub: a non-equity, remote community for builders at the pre-idea to pre-seed stage, run with s16VC.
- Learning Sessions: one hour, one topic, on what is actually happening in machine intelligence.
- Machine Intelligence Summit: one day, one room, 200 people who build frontier AI in Europe, 10 November 2026 in Zurich.
Where to find us
| Where we sit | General Partners in Switzerland and Sweden; Venture Partners in Zurich and London |
|---|---|
| Fund | Ellipsis Venture I, domiciled in Luxembourg and managed by Ellipsis Venture GP S.a r.l. (see the SFDR disclosure) |
| Website | ellipsis-venture.com is our only website |
| linkedin.com/company/ellipsis-venture | |
| Founders | Send us your deck |
Not to be confused with "Ellipsis Ventures" of Carmel, Indiana, an unrelated US firm that appears in some investor databases under a similar name. We are the European AI fund with partners in Switzerland and Sweden.