🤟🏻 Heartcore's 2025 Round-up

💫 As the year comes to a close, it naturally invites reflection. A moment to pause before the calendar resets and the details start to blur.

In 2025, Heartcore Capital ranked among the Top 1% Power Law Investors in EMEA out of 3600+ EMEA funds and the Top 5% value-add investors out of 800+ EMEA funds, according to Dealroom.co. We value these recognitions not as scorecards, but as indicators of something earned over time: early conviction, close partnership, founders who kept building through a demanding market.

None of this happens in isolation. These outcomes are the result of relentless work by the founders we back, resilient teams across our portfolio and the trust our LPs place in us.

Alongside that, our community here has continued to grow, now more than 7,700 strong, engaging with our thinking, challenging our assumptions, staying curious with us.

What follows is a look back at the moments, progress and people that shaped 2025 and the foundations they have laid for the year ahead. Investing in Happiness remains at the core of how we operate and will continue to guide us into 2026. 🤟🏻

If you missed the past newsletters, you can catch up here. Now, let’s dive in!

We saw fantastic fundraising across our portfolio…

• 🇩🇰 PhaseTree, a material discovery platform combining physics-based modelling with AI, raised €3M in a seed round led by us.

• 🇫🇷 We made our investment in quantum domain with Isentroniq, a startup offering wiring solutions that scale solid-state quantum computers. It raised €4M in a pre-seed round led by us.

• 🇵🇹 Spinnable AI, raised $2M in pre-seed funding led by us to help companies scale beyond human limits.

• 🇩🇰 Qualia, building the first VLA-native (Vision-Language-Action Models) platform, raised €1.74M in a pre-seed round led by us.

• 🌍 Wingbits, building the most sophisticated and fair flight tracking network worldwide, raised $5.6M in a strategic round led by Borderless Capital and Bullish Capital with participation from us and other investors.

• 🌍 Veda, an asset management protocol allowing for the creation of yield-generating vaults raised $18M in a Series A round led by CoinFund with participation from us and other investors.

• 🌍 375.ai , a DePIN protocol deploying edge devices at key US sites to sell processed data to enterprise clients, raised $10M across multiple rounds led by Delphi Ventures, Strobe Ventures and HackVC with participation from us and other investors.

• 🌍 Hyperbeat, the native yield layer of Hyperliquid, raised a $5.2M Seed round led by Ether.fi and Electric Capital with participation from us and other investors.

• 🇩🇰 🇬🇧 Orbex, the orbital launch service for small satellites, raised £23M in the first tranche of their Series D round to launch their first rocket soon.

• 🇪🇸 Perk (fkaTravelPerk), the corporate travel and expense management platform, raised $200M in Series E funding to acquire Yokoy and accelerate growth.

• 🇩🇪 FINN, the car subscription platform, secured €1B and closed their second ABS financing round for fleet expansion.

• 🇺🇸 Fora Travel, the modern travel agency democratising travel advising, raised $60M across Series B and C rounds led by Thrive Capital and Insight Partners and participation from us.

• 🇫🇮 IXI, building the world’s first autofocus eyewear, raised $36.5M in Series A round led by Plural with participation from us and other investors.

• 🇫🇷 La Fourche, the online organic supermarket, raised €31.5M in a Series C round co-led by BpiFrance and Astanor with participation from Aurae, Eight Roads and Anterra Capital.

• 🇦🇪 Qlub, the fastest restaurant payment solution, raised $30M co-led by Shorooq and Cherry Ventures with participation from e& capital, Endeavor, Legend Capital and Mubadala.

• 🇫🇷 Skynopy, a startup providing ground station services for low Earth orbit satellites raised €15M in a seed round led by Alven with participation from other investors and us.

• 🇫🇷 Zefir, the first collective sales real estate platform, raised €15M led by FinTech Collective, Sequoia Capital, Zigg Capital and participation from us.

• 🇪🇸 🇲🇽 Luca, an AI-powered learning platform for K-12 education in LatAm, raised $8M Series A round led by 6 Degrees Capital and participation from Explorer, us and Shilling VC.

• 🌍 Li.Fi, building the universal market for crypto assets that powers many of the most popular consumer crypto experiences such as Robinhood, Binance, Hyperliquid, etc., raised $29M Series A extension round led by Multicoin Capital and CoinFund.

…among several others in 🇪🇺 who we haven’t yet announced as they focus on building! Stay tuned for these announcements in 2026.

We saw them reach other sorts of milestones too…

• 🇩🇪 GetYourGuide, the global marketplace for tours and activities, crossed 100 bookings per minute on August 3rd and welcomed over 23 million travellers this summer. It broke all its booking records! It is also profitable on an adjusted EBITDA basis.

• 🇺🇸 Fora Travel, named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in 2025 and acquired award-winning AI startup Legends to power personalised travel experiences.

• 🇩🇰 Podimo, a podcast and audiobook platform, reached 1M paying subscribers globally in its first five years.

• 🇩🇰 🇬🇧 BLAST, producing live esports for thousands and streaming it to millions worldwide, enters in a JV with Reliance India, expands to the US and joins a multi-year partnerships with Gaming Malta, with Singapore Tourism Board and with hit mobile game Brawl Stars (Supercell).

• 🇫🇷 GOURMEY/PARIMA, creating sustainable cultivated meat delights, becomes the first food bio-manufacturing company in the world to hit production cost as low as €7/kg, acquired VitalMeat to launch PARIMA and becomes the first-ever European company approved for cultivated meat.

• 🇩🇰 Corti, delivering enterprise-grade healthcare AI, launches FactsR™, partners with Dedalus, Medatixx, Philips SpeechLive, achieves ISO/IEC 27001, launches clinical-grade Danish language model and the biggest automatic speech to text model for French healthcare.

• 🇩🇪 FINN adds 15,000+ vehicles within the first half of 2025, tops Sifted ranking of 250 fastest-growing startups in Europe and their CEO was in Capital Magazin‘s Top 40 under 40 2025.

• 🇬🇧 🇩🇰 Orbex was pre-selected for European Launcher Challenge and successfully completes launch simulation for Prime.

• 🇪🇸 Perk launched their new brand, their CEO was featured in Skift’s Power Rankings and they formed partnership with Audi F1.

• 🇫🇮 IXI, one step closer to producing its autofocus glasses, revealed its latest 22 gram prototype (the lightest smart glass frames in the world) and its CEO was featured in Duodecim’s Health and Healthcare Influential People 2025 list.

• 🇩🇰 SOUNDBOKS, making loud, durable and portable bluetooth speakers for parties and outdoor events, launched Lightboks.

• 🇫🇷 Nūmi, reinventing infant nutrition through biotech, was the GRAND WINNER at the Hello Tomorrow Global Challenge!

• Two of our portfolio founders 🇫🇷 Numi’s Eden and 🇩🇪 Voyfai’s James were in 2025 Forbes 30u30!

• 🇩🇪 FORMEL SKIN, offering individualised, high-quality dermatological treatments online, was acquired by MANUAL, leading UK health-tech platform. We had partnered with FORMEL SKIN since their pre-seed in 2019.

• 🇩🇰 🇬🇧 Forecast a global provider of AI-powered project and resource management software, was acquired by Accelo. We had partnered with Forecast since their seed round in 2018.

• 🌍 Hyperliquid, the leading decentralised exchange for digital assets, surpassed $100M in monthly revenues with a 99% free-cash-flow margin in 2025. Hyperliquid now accounts for 35% of all crypto protocol revenues. It is a remarkable achievement for a two-year-old, bootstrapped protocol run by a team of just 11!

• 🌍 Ethena, the leading decentralised stablecoin, reached a new all-time high with $14B in deposits, representing 138% YTD growth in 2025. In parallel, StablecoinX, a Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) vehicle providing access to the ENA token via a publicly listed wrapper, announced plans to list on NASDAQ. In addition, the Ethena DAO has voted to begin directing protocol revenues toward ENA token buybacks.

• 🌍 Pendle, the leading decentralised fixed-income marketplace, also achieved a new all-time high with over $14B in deposits, representing 192% YTD growth in 2025. Pendle’s annualised revenue run-rate recently crossed $100M, further cementing its position as a category leader.

• 🌍 Aave, the leading onchain decentralised bank, achieved a new all-time high deposits with over $42B deposited and 66% growth YT. This would rank AAVE in the top 50 of US banks by deposits. They also launched a consumer-facing app.

• 🌍 Veda, crossed a significant milestone, securing over $3.5 billion assets and moving to #14 as the protocol with the highest total value locked across all of DeFi in 2025.

We also welcomed some fantastic people to our team…

• Michael Baczyk joined our investment team in November 2025 to back the next generation of quantum founders! 💪🏻

• Péter Szalay and Malte Hjortkjær joined the Heartcore crew in October 2025 in Copenhagen as Finance Assistant and Legal Assistant respectively! 🫀

• Helena joined us as Investor Relations Assistant at our Copenhagen office in May 2025! 🪽

• Bodi Tent also joined our investment team in Berlin in February 2025! 🚀

• Tomas Fanta also came on board as the newest member of our Web3 investment team in January 2025! 🙌🏻

We hosted some wonderful events with our founders and our team…

• We opened our Copenhagen office for our first Friends and Founders Friday Bars in January and November! 🍷

• Paulina and Bodi hosted a dinner for CTOs/engineers and stealth founders with Operators and Friends in Berlin.

• The whole Heartcore team got together in France for our annual offsite and strategy session. 🫶🏻

• We hosted an Active Owners VC Roundtable with Novo Holdings at Danske Bank bringing together the Danish VC ecosystem to talk about the key challenges fund managers face.

• We participated in the AI Tinkerers Berlin meetups that brought together 200+ of the strongest AI builders and operators in August and November. 🧑🏻‍💻

• We hosted an LP breakfast and a founder breakfast adjacent to TechBBQ in August in Copenhagen.

• We joined Pluto Hacker House v2 that brought together a stellar group of founders and builders in Paris for a month. 🌑

• We joined the Tech:Europe AI Hackathon in Copenhagen bringing together 70+ builders for a day of hacking.

• We brought together a select group of early-stage Nordic founders at our Line of Sight breakfast at Slush for a morning of unobstructed focus. 🎯

• We have joined DAVN, a Digital Asset Venture Network alongside leading European GPs, LPs and founders empowering the blockchain VC ecosystem across Europe.

• We took-over St. Oberholz in Berlin to host an AI co-working meetup with AI Tinkerers, Langdock and Anthropic! 👩🏻‍💻

We also took the stage / the mic, were quoted in and put out some thought pieces….

• Our Prepared Minds essay on Defence was featured in Bootstrapping, essay on Agentic AI was in EUVC and the essay on Quantum was in Quantum Insider. ⚡️

• Max talked to FT about the potential of AI agents to disrupt online travel agents.

• Signe delivered a keynote (Getting the Capital) and was part of a panel on Exit Strategies at the Iceland Innovation Week.

• Max joined an AMA session on travel investment outlook at the Skift Data + AI Summit. ✈️

• Jimmy moderated a panel on how can European pension funds invest in growth at the TechBBQ Pension Summit. 📈

• Signe moderated a panel on investing in resilience at TechBBQ Investor Day! 💡

• Lærke joined a panel about navigating the current VC climate at the The Founder’s Story at AI Day Denmark.

• Jimmy was on a webinar with Sifted and Aquark to talk about making startups stand out to Media and Investors. 💬

• Yacine joined a panel on demystifying crypto at the 0100 International LP-GP Conference in Milan. 🪙

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