Team setup
We complement scientist-founders with experienced operators — running founder gap analysis and co-founder matching to complete the team.
Pre-seed deep tech · Vienna, Austria
Where Austrian science becomes the next generation of companies.
Noctua is a specialised pre-seed fund for research-driven deep tech spin-offs. We back the boldest founders at the earliest stage — and stay close while they build.
€14M
first closing
€500k
up to, as lead
~10
investments / year
5
technical universities
Backed by Austria's leading technical universities & institutions
The opportunity
World-class at inventing.
Under-resourced at owning.
Austria is one of Europe's most research-intensive countries — top-tier universities, deep R&D spending, and breakthroughs from quantum computing to additive manufacturing to the foundations of CRISPR.
Yet far too much of that intellectual property never reaches the market. The number of successful spin-offs lags the EU, and the root cause is structural: there has been almost no capital purpose-built for the very first step out of the lab.
Noctua exists to close that gap — financing promising technologies in the pre-seed phase and turning excellent science into scalable companies, so that value, jobs and innovation stay in the region.
RESEARCH
3.3%
of GDP spent on R&D — 3rd highest in the EU.
THE GAP
Pre-seed
The missing instrument: lead capital at the first round.
PIPELINE
150–200
academic startups created in Austria each year.
SOURCING
100+
R&D institutions across the country in our reach.
How we help
More than a cheque.
Spin-off founders meet a wave of new, often structural challenges. We lead the first round — then work alongside the team on the things that decide whether a deep tech company survives its earliest years.
IP & tech transfer
A clean, defensible IP position from day one — sparring on strategy, renegotiating transfer agreements, and access to a network of IP professionals.
Follow-on financing
A clear roadmap to the next round, fundraising materials, and warm introductions across a Europe-wide network of follow-on investors.
€500k
Lead ticket in the first round, technology-agnostic.
€25M
Target fund size — building a diversified portfolio.
5–10
New investments every year across five verticals.
Pre-seed
First institutional cheque — straight from the research lab.
Where we invest
Five fields at the frontier of research.
We invest technology-agnostically in the most promising spin-off teams Austria-wide — including spin-offs from institutions beyond our shareholder circle. These are the verticals where we see the deepest potential.
Deep Tech
Climate & Industrial Tech
Software & AI
Health Tech
SynBio & BioTech
Not sure where you fit?
Tell us about itThe process
From lab to first round.
1
Source
We track research projects long before they spin out, working with tech-transfer offices and our university network.
2
Evaluate
A deep dive on team, technology and market — backed by a Tech Due Diligence board of leading academics.
3
Lead
We move at founder speed and structure rounds founder-friendly, leading the pre-seed as first institutional investor.
4
Build
Team, IP and the path to the next round — we stay close and reserve capital to back the winners.
From the portfolio
Why we invested.
Health Tech · Advanced Manufacturing
Turn-Motion: 5D carbon-fibre printing meets physics-informed AI
A Vienna deep tech team rebuilding how orthotics, prosthetics and exoskeletons are made — compressing days of skilled manual work into hours of automated, patient-specific production. We led the equity portion of their pre-seed round.
Read the full thesisTURN·MOTION
Building a spin-off from Austrian research?
We read every submission. Share your deck and tell us what you're building — wherever you are on the journey from lab to company.