Heidelberg-based AI startup kausable raises €12 million in seed funding

Heidel­berg — The Euro­pean startup kausable has raised 12 million euros in its seed funding round to deve­lop causal AI that adapts effi­ci­ently and robustly to chan­ging contexts without the need for retrai­ning. The deep-tech startup has ties to Heidel­berg Univer­sity and Black Forest Labs (BFL), one of Europe’s most promi­nent AI compa­nies, among others. 

Inves­tors

German and Belgian inves­tors UVC Part­ners and Entou­rage are leading the round, with addi­tio­nal support from German inves­tors HTGF and Mätch VC. kausable is also backed by various private busi­ness angels from the AI indus­try and acade­mia, who work at compa­nies such as Black Forest Labs, OpenAI, Google Deep­Mind, Noxtua, and the Euro­pean Labo­ra­tory for Lear­ning and Intel­li­gent Systems (ELLIS). This funding round comes at a time when, due to geopo­li­ti­cal insta­bi­lity, stra­te­gic digi­tal sove­reig­nty and AI deve­lo­ped in and for Europe are beco­ming incre­asingly important. 

Fron­tier AI – Deve­lo­ped and Supported in Europe

“The world is evol­ving at a rapid pace, and AI should do the same. Yet even the most powerful AI systems are curr­ently still very static and require frequent, time-consum­ing, and costly retrai­ning. With kausable, we’re solving this problem by deve­lo­ping a new type of causal world model that adapts effi­ci­ently and robustly to the ever-chan­­ging world. This offers enorm­ous oppor­tu­ni­ties in highly dyna­mic fields such as robo­tics, the energy sector, and finance. “We are exci­ted to work with our investors—UVC Part­ners, Entou­rage, HTGF, and Mätch VC—to advance Euro­pean AI at a pivo­tal moment,” explains Johan­nes Haux (CEO and co-foun­­der of kausable). 

“The poten­tial we see here is enorm­ous: Virtually every indus­trial company relies on complex systems whose deve­lo­p­ment and opera­tion are diffi­cult to predict and control, and curr­ently, the use of AI in each of these systems is time-consum­ing and costly. kausable drasti­cally redu­ces this effort. This trans­forms AI from a series of costly indi­vi­dual projects into a solu­tion that can be scaled across the entire indus­trial land­scape; and that is precis­ely why we are leading this funding round,” empha­si­zes Andreas Unseld (part­ner at UVC Partners). 

“Most AI models are trai­ned to remem­ber the past. kausable is deve­lo­ping AI that can think about the future. Instead of rely­ing on ever-larger data­sets and constant retrai­ning, they’re taking a funda­men­tally diffe­rent approach: systems that adapt, infer causal rela­ti­onships, and solve problems they’ve never encoun­te­red before. This is an ambi­tious scien­ti­fic endea­vor and exactly the kind of ground­brea­king AI company we’re eager to support,” empha­si­zes Pieter­jan Bouten (co-foun­­der of Entourage). 

From Heidel­berg Univer­sity to Pionee­ring AI Research

Johan­nes Haux (CEO), Dr. Benja­min Herde­anu (CTO), and Gregor Ramien (COO) foun­ded kausable in 2025, drawing on their rese­arch at Heidel­berg Univer­sity as well as their profes­sio­nal expe­ri­ence in start­ups and highly regu­la­ted indus­tries such as cyber­se­cu­rity and banking. That same year, they closed their pre-seed funding round at 1.5 million euros and recently deve­lo­ped TipPFN, a zero-shot-capa­­ble fore­cas­ting model for complex, dyna­mic systems that predicts “black swans” (rare but far-reaching events) in various fields of appli­ca­tion, such as medi­cine or the energy sector. kausable’s “reaso­­ning-first” AI learns in a way simi­lar to humans: A robust, univer­sal set of intui­ti­ons (the “world model”) helps the AI adapt quickly to chan­ges in its envi­ron­ment with mini­mal new infor­ma­tion. Toge­ther with rese­ar­chers from Colum­bia Univer­sity, the team recently published a rese­arch paper vali­da­ting their approach. 

kausable plans to use the invest­ment to expand its nine-person team and further deve­lop its Fron­tier model.

About kausable
The Heidel­­berg-based AI startup kausable deve­lops causal AI that adapts auto­no­mously to new contexts without trai­ning and using mini­mal amounts of data. kausable was foun­ded in 2025 by Johan­nes Haux (CEO), Dr. Benja­min Herde­anu (CTO), and Gregor Ramien (COO), three physi­cists with ties to Heidel­berg Univer­sity and Black Forest Labs. kausable has alre­ady published a paper in colla­bo­ra­tion with experts from Colum­bia Univer­sity and deve­lo­ped TipPFN, a zero-shot-capa­­ble model for predic­ting rare, high-impact events in complex dyna­mic systems. 

In 2026, kausable recei­ved 12 million euros in seed funding from Euro­pean inves­tors UVC Part­ners, Entou­rage, HTGF, and Mätch VC. In addi­tion, kausable is supported by private busi­ness angels from the AI indus­try and the acade­mic commu­nity. — www.kausable.ai

About UVC Partners

UVC Part­ners supports Europe’s most ambi­tious B2B tech foun­ders in buil­ding new market leaders. From deep tech to AI, the firm has inves­ted in promi­sing start­ups, inclu­ding Isar Aero­space, Proxima Fusion, Q.ANT, Aleph Alpha, Tacto, Flix, and FINN. 

With more than 700 million euros in assets under manage­ment, UVC Part­ners initi­ally invests up to 15 million euros in compa­nies at various stages, from early-stage to growth-stage. Over the entire term of the invest­ment, up to 30 million euros can be provi­ded per company. 

Beyond capi­tal, the invest­ment team at UVC Part­ners is a “tech team for tech teams”—it supports foun­ders in buil­ding and scaling market-leading compa­nies. Through its unique access to UnternehmerTUM—Europe’s leading inno­va­tion center—the VC offers a high-performing ecosys­tem of entre­pre­neurs, key busi­ness decis­­ion-makers, and top rese­ar­chers. UVC Part­ners’ value crea­tion team provi­des direct access to a network of over 1,000 companies—potential custo­mers and stra­te­gic part­ners. — www.uvcpartners.com

About Entou­rage

Entou­rage is an early-stage venture capi­tal firm foun­ded by Pieter­jan Bouten, co-foun­­der of Show­pad. Built by prac­ti­tio­ners, Entou­rage supports the next gene­ra­tion of legen­dary foun­ders from the pre-seed to seed stages in the fields of AI, robo­tics, enter­prise soft­ware, and deep tech. Entou­rage brings more than just capi­tal to the table; the team has first­hand expe­ri­ence buil­ding and scaling global tech­no­logy compa­nies. Its port­fo­lio includes ground­brea­king compa­nies such as Aikido, Lexroom, and Conveo. 

About Mätch VC

Mätch VC is a Euro­pean venture capi­tal inves­tor based in Stutt­gart that focu­ses on deep tech in the pre-seed phase. As a part­ner from the very begin­ning, the fund is usually the first name on the foun­ders’ cap table. In addi­tion to capi­tal (€50 million in fund size), Mätch VC offers a unique network of 91 family-owned busi­nesses, indus­try execu­ti­ves, and founders—including names such as Trumpf, Ritter Sport, and Fest­ool. Follow-on finan­cing rounds for port­fo­lio compa­nies are regu­larly led by global Tier‑1 funds. The port­fo­lio includes, among others, Black Forest Labs (Fron­tier AI Lab), Block­brain (modu­lar AI plat­form), Atmos Space Cargo (space tech), and XOR (cyber­se­cu­rity).  — www.maetch.vc/