Forestay Launches $220M Growth-Stage VC Fund Focused on AI

Forestay, an up-and-coming venture capital firm based in Geneva, Switzerland, has recently closed its second fund, Forestay Capital II, at a hard cap of $220 million.

Although relatively unknown in Europe until it began leading investment rounds for enterprise startups a few years ago, Forestay has made significant strides, most notably investing in Zurich-based scanning software startup Scandit, which has raised $273 million to date.

Forestay Capital II plans to invest across Europe and Israel, with a particular focus on leading growth rounds ranging from $10 million to $15 million at critical inflection points for companies.

To date, Forestay has backed 13 companies, including K2View, Nexthink, Scandit, and Wasabi, three of which have achieved unicorn status while two have been acquired. The firm recently invested in Neural Concept, a spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), which raised $27 million in a Series B round aimed at revolutionizing manufacturing design with AI.

Forestay also led the $12 million Series A round for Portugal’s predictive maintenance startup Stratio in 2021.

Founded as part of B-FLEXION, the private investment vehicle of the Bertarelli family—known for building Serono into the third-largest biotech company globally before merging with Merck KGaA—Forestay is led by Frederic Wohlwend, the former Global Chief Digital Officer of Merck KGaA and Serono.

“In my role as Chief Digital Officer in large corporations, particularly in the biopharma clinical space, I gained comprehensive insight into the entire value chain, from early research to distribution,” Wohlwend told TechCrunch in a call. “This experience shaped our decision to focus on enterprise and enterprise AI.”

Despite the competitive nature of the market, Wohlwend emphasized that Forestay will maintain a highly focused approach: “We concentrate exclusively on enterprise AI and SaaS. We avoid hardware, including sensors. Our sweet spot is Series B at the inflection point. We brand ourselves as a ‘nearly-growth’ fund, capturing our targets as soon as they generate some revenue.”

He added that Switzerland presents an interesting ecosystem, and Southern Europe is also emerging as a significant player.

Forestay’s new fund is also supported by Anaïs Ventures, the investment vehicle for certain members of the Firmenich family, who built a global perfume empire.

Julien Firmenich commented, “Forestay’s focused investment strategy and operational expertise, honed through years of industry experience, align perfectly with our vision.”

Europe, with its fragmented consumer markets and diverse languages, has developed a robust market for SaaS and enterprise solutions, attracting numerous enterprise-focused VCs. A detailed analysis of top companies and trends in the European and Israeli SaaS market last year revealed that the market reset was driven by the growth in generative AI. Forestay's entry adds another valuable option for growth-stage startups in Europe, where securing growth capital is often more challenging than in the US.