The infrastructure powering Europe's private capital industry—venture funds, private equity shops, family offices managing billions—remains, somewhat improbably, a patchwork of Excel files and manual workflows. bunch, a Berlin-based fintech that's been quietly building AI-native software to replace that sprawl, just closed $35 million in Series B funding to accelerate what it calls the "un-spreadsheeting" of fund operations.
The round, which closed May 19, brings bunch's total capital raised to over $58 million. Portage, the fintech-focused investment arm operating within Sagard, led the financing. Illuminate Financial, a newcomer barely three weeks removed from closing its own $135 million Early Growth Fund on April 29, joined as a new backer alongside returning investors Motive Partners, Cherry Ventures, and FinTech Collective.
For bunch's founders—Enrico Ohnemüller and Levent Altunel, who launched the company in 2021—the bet is straightforward, if ambitious: that fund managers overseeing hundreds of millions or billions in assets shouldn't still be wrestling with investor portals, transfer agency, fund accounting, treasury, and compliance tools that feel borrowed from an earlier era. More than 150 fund managers now run those functions on bunch's platform, serving over 12,000 limited partners across 500-plus investment structures.
Infrastructure That Becomes Structurally Necessary
Hélène Falchier, a partner at Portage, framed the investment in terms that venture capitalists favor when they're backing picks-and-shovels businesses: structural defensibility. "Portage invests in financial infrastructure that becomes structurally necessary as markets grow," she said. Portage, which manages over $5.7 billion across 115-plus portfolio companies, has built a track record in the fintech infrastructure layer—the unglamorous but essential plumbing that often scales alongside market growth rather than in spite of it.
Konstantin Koenig, a principal at Illuminate Financial, pointed to a gap that's become almost cliché in private markets, though no less real for its familiarity. "Private markets are scaling faster than the infrastructure supporting them," he noted. It's a refrain heard often enough across the industry, but bunch's traction suggests the pain is acute enough to drive real spending.
The customer list includes recognizable names across the European ecosystem: FINVIA Family Office, Passion Capital, Hummingbird VC, Antler, Merantix, Tiny Supercomputer, and Redstone. Not household names, perhaps, but the kinds of institutional players who manage serious capital and have grown weary of cobbling together systems that weren't designed for today's regulatory and operational complexity.
Numbers That Tell a Growth Story
bunch claims its 2025 annual recurring revenue grew 300%—a figure that always warrants scrutiny but becomes more credible when paired with a net revenue retention rate of 156%. That metric, which measures how much existing customers are expanding their usage, suggests the platform isn't just landing new logos; it's deepening its footprint within funds that have already signed on.
The company operates from offices in Berlin, London, and Amsterdam, and maintains ISO 27001 certification—table stakes for any firm handling sensitive financial data, but worth noting in a sector where compliance failures can be existential.
In February, bunch launched what it calls "bunch tax," an integrated tax and accounting service that the company claims can slash investor reporting times by up to 80%. The product, led by what bunch describes as tax and accounting specialists (the details are sparse), has been picked up by customers including Merantix. Whether the 80% figure holds up under scrutiny remains to be seen, but the launch signals bunch's intent to own more of the fund operations stack rather than just nibbling at the edges.
Data-Centric, AI-Native, and Other Buzzwords That Might Actually Mean Something
bunch positions itself as "AI-native" rather than a legacy system retrofitted with machine learning capabilities—a distinction that matters more in practice than in marketing copy. The platform's data-centric architecture is designed to ingest unstructured documents, extract and structure information, and maintain audit trails.
In theory, this means a fund manager can upload a jumble of subscription agreements, side letters, and regulatory filings, and bunch's systems will parse, categorize, and route the data where it needs to go. In practice, how well this works likely varies, but the 156% net revenue retention figure suggests customers are finding enough value to keep expanding their usage.
Where the Capital Goes Next
bunch plans to deploy the fresh capital in ways that sound almost boilerplate but are probably genuine priorities: accelerate commercial expansion across Europe, deepen automation and AI capabilities (specifically in capital calls, compliance, distributions, and reporting), push into new geographies and asset classes, and scale the organization. Translation: hire more engineers, hire more salespeople, and try to move faster than the competition.
That competition is consolidating, and quickly. France's Roundtable offers SPV and fund formation services across multiple European structures. Across the Atlantic, iCapital has been on an acquisition spree—snapping up LP onboarding tool Passthrough in February and insurance tech Hexure in March. Juniper Square, which raised $130 million in June 2025 for its unified GP platform, looms as another well-capitalized player going after overlapping parts of the stack.
bunch's trajectory has followed a fairly conventional venture path: a €7.3 million seed round in July 2023, led by Cherry Ventures; a $15.5 million Series A in July 2024, led by FinTech Collective; and now this $35 million Series B. At the time of its Series A, the company reported €2 billion in committed capital running through its platform—a figure that's likely grown, though the company hasn't disclosed an updated number.
The infrastructure layer of private markets remains fragmented, manual, and ripe for disruption—until it isn't. Whether bunch becomes the horizontal winner or finds itself carved up by vertical specialists will depend on execution, timing, and a bit of luck. For now, at least, the company is positioned to find out with its current capital.
