Ventech's Houry prices the seed boom at five times a typical round

The ownership rule explains the pricing complaint. Ventech puts EUR 1m to EUR 5m into a deal, usually as lead or co-lead, and wants to hold 10 to 25 per cent of the company once it is in ^[6]. At the top of that cheque range, 25 per cent requires a post-money valuation of EUR 20m and 10 per cent requires EUR 50m ^[7]. Houry said seed rounds are currently very high and that valuations have risen because of it, and the example she gave is a round five times the size of a typical one ^[3][8]. Series A, she said, is more disciplined, because investors there want real progress and a strong pipeline and founders have less power over the terms ^[5].

The AI half of the sixth fund is about EUR 87.5m ^[9]. At EUR 1m to EUR 5m a position, that pays for somewhere between 18 and 88 first cheques before reserves and fees ^[10]. Ventech uses local partners in Paris, Berlin, Munich, Stockholm and Helsinki instead of relying on investment banks to find deals ^[11].

"Document management, you know, it's kind of a boring sector, a traditional one. But then AI will bring new opportunities, because it totally changes the way people look at that document," Houry said ^[2]. Tech Funding News set her view against an industry writing increasingly large cheques for flashy AI agents ^[24]. In the same answer she said the industrial topics get "somehow picked up by the fact that the agentic world will change the way things are used" ^[2].

Lissi, the Frankfurt digital identity infrastructure company Ventech led a EUR 3.5m round into in July 2026, was founded by a group out of Commerzbank's technology division ^[17]. Naaia's founders are three lawyers and a digital transformation specialist ^[16]. "Since we are an early-stage firm, we think it's important to be on the ground," Houry said ^[13]. She argued that in sovereignty-related sectors such as compliance, digital identity and advertising infrastructure, a local presence is a real advantage against larger American competitors ^[14].

"As for LPs, they are interested not in the paper value but in actual cash," Houry said ^[21]. She cited three 2026 exits against the long-standing claim that European venture has ample seed and Series A money and too few trade sales or IPOs ^[25]. Monterro, a Nordic software investor, bought Kaisa, a Swedish customer-engagement platform Ventech had backed since 2016 ^[19]. Belfius, a Belgian bancassurer, bought the French digital insurer Leocare in June 2026, its first acquisition outside Belgium ^[20]. Only the 365Talents deal carries a published price, and the account does not say what Ventech owned in any of the three ^[23].

Three deals in one year supports her point about frequency. On size, the one published consideration is the 365Talents one, and by itself it is nowhere near returning a EUR 175m fund ^[18][1].

If enterprise buyers get document intelligence bundled in with the models they already pay for, the separate content-management line Houry is buying gets thinner. And if seed prices keep climbing at the pace she described, a EUR 5m cheque buys under 10 per cent of a company, at which point Ventech either accepts less than its own ownership floor or stops leading ^[6][7].