What Moonfire Ventures does

Moonfire Ventures LLP is a London-based, UK Financial Conduct Authority-regulated (FRN 932750) early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2019 by Mattias Ljungman and Mike Arpaia. The firm invests in pre-seed and seed technology companies led by ambitious, technically-minded European founders, with a portfolio of 72+ companies spanning five sector themes: Security, Infrastructure & Tooling; Work & Knowledge; Capital & Finance; Gaming, Community & Leisure; and Health & Wellbeing. The firm is differentiated by a proprietary technology stack that includes a large-scale data crawling infrastructure (sourcing up to four million new companies per quarter), custom machine-learning and fine-tuned LLM models (including GPT-4o) used for screening and thesis-fit evaluation, and a vector-database-backed RAG pipeline. Internally, this stack powers the "Launchpad" web platform — providing founders with Go-to-Market Strategy, Fundraising CRM, Executive Talent Search, Founder Networking, Portfolio Insights and partner collaboration modules — and externally, the public VC Portfolio Simulator (portfolio-simulator.moonfire.com). The firm describes itself as "the only European early-stage VC with more engineers than investors," with a 13-person team that includes a Head of AI & ML, a Staff Software Engineer, a Senior SRE, and a Software Engineer.

Moonfire earns revenue through standard venture capital fund economics: management fees on assets under management and carried interest on fund returns, deploying capital as the first institutional investor in pre-seed and seed rounds. Co-investors across the portfolio include GV, Accel, Sequoia (Scout Fund), Speedinvest, DST Global Partners, NVentures (NVIDIA's venture arm), Y Combinator, Seedcamp, redalpine, Prosus Ventures, WndrCo, Datadog and OVNI Capital, alongside founder-angels such as Tristan Handy (dbt Labs), Ilkka Paananen (Supercell) and Bradley Horowitz (Google). The firm's distribution channels combine direct sourcing via its data infrastructure, content marketing (the "Stories" publication, monthly newsletter, LinkedIn and X/Twitter @Moonfire_VC), proprietary community events (Pulse Summit), and an open Positions page that aggregates roles across the portfolio. The firm is headquartered at 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, with operating reach across the UK, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and selected US deals.

Name

Moonfire Ventures

Legal name

Moonfire Ventures LLP

Website

https://moonfire.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2019

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Moonfire Ventures is a London-based, FCA-regulated early-stage venture capital firm investing pre-seed and seed capital into European technology founders. It differentiates through proprietary AI/ML sourcing infrastructure, a fine-tuned LLM thesis-fit pipeline, and an in-house Launchpad platform supporting portfolio founders.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Venture Capital

NAICS

Portfolio Management and Investment Advice (52394), Portfolio Management and Investment Advice (523940)

SIC

Investment Advice (6282)

akta.pro primary industry

Early-Stage Venture Capital (Pre-Seed/Seed) (FSANAAAA)

akta.pro secondary industry

Early-Stage Venture Capital (Series A/B) (FSANAAAB)

Keywords

• Venture capital
• Seed stage investing
• Startup funding
• Portfolio support
• Early stage technology

Headquarters

HQ city

London

HQ country

United Kingdom

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Venture capital fund management and investment returns: Moonfire Ventures LLP is a UK-regulated venture capital firm (FCA FRN 932750) investing in pre-seed and seed technology companies. As a fund manager it earns standard VC economics: management fees on assets under management and carried interest on fund returns. Capital is deployed in pre-seed and seed rounds across sectors including Security/Infra/Tooling, Work & Knowledge, Capital & Finance, Gaming/Community/Leisure and Health & Wellbeing.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels5 records

Marketing channels8 records

Core offering

Moonfire Ventures is a tech-driven early-stage European venture capital firm that invests pre-seed and seed capital (initial cheques typically around £500K) into technology startups across five thematic sectors: Security/Infra/Tooling, Work & Knowledge, Capital & Finance, Gaming/Community/Leisure, and Health & Wellbeing. The firm complements its capital with the proprietary Launchpad platform, which delivers portfolio operating support across hiring, sales, fundraising, and product, and offers the public VC Portfolio Simulator as a free market-facing tool.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Moonfire Pre-Seed Investment Program Pre-seed venture capital investment programme for European technology startup founders, with initial cheques typically around £500K acting as first institutional capital across five thematic sectors (Security/Infra/Tooling, Work & Knowledge, Capital & Finance, Gaming/Community/Leisure, Health & Wellbeing). Investors (LPs) commit to the underlying FCA-regulated fund; founders receive capital plus Launchpad operating support.
• Moonfire Seed Investment Program Seed-stage follow-on venture capital for existing Moonfire portfolio companies, providing additional capital as they advance from pre-seed to seed milestones.
• Launchpad Proprietary operating-support platform for Moonfire portfolio founders, delivering structured assistance across hiring, sales, fundraising, and product to extend value beyond the equity cheque.
• VC Portfolio Simulator Free public web tool that allows prospective LPs and founders to model and simulate venture portfolio outcomes under different assumptions, used as a market-facing demonstration of Moonfire's data and modelling capabilities.

Quantifiable outcome

• Sourcing up to 4 million new companies per quarter via proprietary data infrastructure
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers12 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration1 record

AI capability3 records

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Three partnerships are on record, tiered ecosystem partner and regulatory partner.

• dbt Labsecosystem partnerStrategic or Co-development PartnerDeep open-source ecosystem alignment: Lightdash is built on top of dbt; Tristan Handy (founder of dbt Labs) invested as a founder-angel in Lightdash's pre-seed alongside Moonfire.
• Station Fecosystem partnerStrategic or Co-development PartnerCo-investor and ecosystem partner in Revyze's $6m seed (Oct 2024), alongside Moonfire and Speedinvest.
• UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)regulatory partnerOthersRegulator that authorises and supervises Moonfire Ventures LLP (FRN 932750).

Scale indicators6 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• LocalGlobe: London-based pre-seed and seed VC focused on UK and European founders. Direct peer with overlapping thesis (community-led, founder-first) and comparable check sizes at pre-seed/seed.
• Speedinvest: Vienna-based European early-stage VC investing across pre-seed and seed. Direct peer because Speedinvest co-led with Moonfire on Eunice and Revyze and competes for the same ambitious European technical founders.
• Balderton Capital: London-based early- and growth-stage European VC. Direct peer in the UK seed/Series A market and a comparable institutional brand competing for the same European founder pool.
• Earlybird Venture Capital: Berlin-based European early-stage VC. Direct peer targeting European technology founders at seed and Series A, with comparable sector breadth across fintech, infra and deep tech.
• Notion Capital: London-based European VC focused on B2B SaaS and enterprise tech from seed to Series A. Direct peer with comparable check sizes and a similar UK/European focus on ambitious technical founders.
• Connect Ventures: London-based pre-seed and seed VC investing across Europe. Direct peer at the earliest stages with comparable founder-led thesis and similar relationship-driven sourcing model.
• Hoxton Ventures: London-based early-stage VC backing European technology startups at seed. Direct peer in the UK pre-seed/seed market, with a comparable mix of ambitious technical founders and B2B/infrastructure focus.

Broad incumbents

• Atomico: London-based European tech VC founded by Skype's Niklas Zennström. Broad incumbent operating across stages in Europe; competes for Series A and later rounds that Moonfire portfolio companies graduate into.
• Index Ventures: Major European and US VC with deep European footprint. Broad incumbent that often leads later rounds of Moonfire's portfolio companies and competes for the same founder mindshare at the top of the funnel.
• Accel: Global VC with a major London office. Broad incumbent that has repeatedly co-invested with Moonfire (Filigran, Lightdash) and competes for follow-on capital in the same European portfolio companies.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/Moonfire_VC
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/moonfire

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles7 records

Subsidiaries1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments68 records

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Moonfire Ventures