welcome to our may newsletter

This month, we announce our investment in Nscale, celebrate Apoha's $36M funding round, share news from Klarna, Mistral, and Dunia, and look back at key events including Deep Tech Momentum, GLOBSEC, and SECA. Read on for these updates and more!

portfolio funding

apoha announces $36M funding to build liquid state intelligence

Apoha has emerged from stealth with a $36M funding round led by Singular, with Draper Associates participating. We've backed Apoha from the very beginning and are proud to double down on our support alongside other existing investors. 

Apoha is building what they call "Liquid State Intelligence" - a new data layer that measures how molecules, materials and formulations actually behave under real-world conditions. While scientists have long relied on sequence and structure to understand matter, behavior has remained a major blind spot. Because this information is missing, companies make billion-dollar decisions everyday with a lot of uncertainty. Apoha's platform fills that gap and is already in commercial use, unlocking real impact across pharmaceuticals, food, materials science, and physical-world AI.

In joint research with Boehringer Ingelheim, Apoha identified high-risk antibody candidates with more than 90% precision, while a separate benchmark showed the platform outperforming 12 industry-standard tests used across the pharmaceutical industry. As a next step, they will continue to build out their platform and commercialization efforts, including their partnerships with Fortune 500 companies.  Read more in Fortune. 

redalpine backs Nscale, the AI infrastructure hyperscaler

In the AI era, compute has become the defining bottleneck. UK-based Nscale is building the foundational layer for global AI deployments, delivering hyperscale compute to the generative AI market through a vertically integrated platform spanning AI infrastructure, data centres, and cloud services across Europe, North America, and beyond.

With hundreds of thousands of GPUs under contract and a multi-gigawatt power pipeline, Nscale is rapidly emerging as a critical enabler of the next generation of AI. With this impressive momentum, we recently invested in the company via our evergreen, multi-stage Summit Fund.

Nscale founder Josh Payne has assembled a high-profile board including Sheryl Sandberg, Susan Decker, and Nick Clegg, alongside an investor base that includes Aker, 8090 Industries, NVIDIA, G Squared, Point72, Citadel, Jane Street, Fidelity, Blue Owl, Dell, and Nokia. The race to deploy production-grade AI infrastructure at scale is just beginning. We are convinced Nscale has what it takes to lead it. Read more here.

portfolio news

• Klarna (Summit Fund) launched its Shopping Search app in ChatGPT, bringing real-time product discovery directly into the conversation. Read more here.

• Mistral AI (Summit Fund) expanded its partnership with BNP Paribas, deepening its deployment across cybersecurity, compliance, and investment banking workflows. Read more in Reuters.

• Dunia (RAC VII) hosted its inaugural Discovery Day in Berlin, bringing together AI researchers, materials scientists, and industry executives from Chevron, Merck, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and IBM to accelerate the emerging field of AI for materials. 

redalpine in the media

From intern to General Partner 

Our GP Sebastian spoke with Business Insider Germany about his stellar path from intern to General Partner in five years, his views on deep tech, and what he would tell others looking to build a career in venture. Read the article here.

event highlights

Deep Tech Momentum, Berlin

We were delighted to join DTM as an Anchor Investor and host the GPxLP Apéro. Mira and Oliver sat on the DTM100 jury, evaluating top deeptech startups across Europe. Oliver also joined Max Niroomand, cofounder and CTO of Lyceum, for a fireside chat on why EU-sovereign AI inference is now the default for European tech companies, not a nice-to-have.

GLOBSEC, Prague

Oliver joined European finance and policy leaders to discuss Europe's scale-up funding gap. The performance case is proven: European VCs outperform US peers on long-term returns, yet only 4% of European startups raise $15M+ rounds versus 8% in the US, representing roughly $300 billion in underfunding since 2015. Closing this gap is one of the biggest opportunities to strengthen Europe's competitiveness and unlock a new wave of global technology leaders.

Baby VC Fireside Chat, Zurich

Harald joined Fiona, strategy lead at Lakera, for a fireside chat to celebrate the launch of the baby vc community in Switzerland. The discussion covered building and investing in AI companies, including where the ecosystem is heading next. It was a great opportunity to support the next generation of European VCs!

Michael at SECA, Zug

Michael took the stage at the The Swiss Private Equity & Corporate Finance Association (SECA) and ZWK event in Zug to make the case for venture in a room full of PE-native investors. His core argument: private equity buys what already exists, while venture builds what doesn't, and right now Europe is a structurally underpriced market sitting at 0.7x the US in early-stage capital and just 0.2x in growth capital. This gap represents an opportunity for investors to act on.