BERLIN & LONDON — May 19, 2026 — bunch, the AI-native fund operations platform for private markets, today announced the close of its $35 million Series B. The round was led by Portage, with participation from Illuminate Financial, significant follow-on investment from existing investors Motive Partners, Cherry Ventures, Fintech Collective and additional angel investors. The funding will be used to accelerate commercial growth across Europe, deepen bunch's automation and AI capabilities, and expand the platform across new geographies, asset classes and operational workflows.

The investment lands as private markets enter a new phase of growth - and operational pressure. With AUM forecast to reach $32 trillion by 2030, and structures such as ELTIF 2.0 set to broaden private wealth access to alternatives, fund managers are being asked to serve more investors, deliver more reporting and manage greater complexity. But the systems supporting them have not kept pace, with core workflows still often managed through spreadsheets, emails and manual processes.

bunch is disrupting legacy fund operations by giving PE and VC fund managers one integrated, digital operating layer across the fund lifecycle. Built in Europe for complex, multi-jurisdictional private markets operations, the platform combines specialist expertise, proprietary software and AI-native infrastructure to help managers scale across jurisdictions, entities, investor groups and regulatory requirements. bunch’s platform can ingest unstructured fund documentation, extract and structure key data, and retain traceability to source documents while keeping human oversight in critical workflows, reducing manual processes while preserving auditability and control. 

The Series B builds on the business’ strong recent momentum. bunch now supports over 150 fund managers and over 12,000 LPs across major European jurisdictions. As customers deepen their use of the platform for live operational workloads, the company has grown its ARR by 300% in 2025 and achieved 156% net revenue retention, demonstrating the value of its platform. bunch already works with a growing base of private markets firms including FINVIA Family Office, Passion Capital, Hummingbird VC, Merantix, Tiny Supercomputer, Redstone and Antler. With this round, bunch has raised over $58 million in total, making it one of Europe's most well-capitalised platforms dedicated to private fund operations.

Enrico Ohnemüller, Co-Founder & CEO, bunch, said:  “Private markets are entering a new phase of growth, but the operating infrastructure behind them has not kept pace. GPs cannot scale on spreadsheet-era infrastructure. We built bunch to give fund managers one platform across the fund lifecycle, designed for the complexity of operating across multiple European jurisdictions. While private markets will remain a people-driven, service-intensive industry, the right combination of specialist expertise, software and AI-native systems make fund operations more efficient, consistent and scalable. This funding allows us to deepen that model and continue modernising private markets infrastructure.”

bunch will deploy the new funding across three priorities:

• Commercial expansion: accelerating the company’s go-to-market strategy and growing its customer base of private equity managers in key European markets, including in Germany, the UK and Luxembourg.
• ‍Product and technology development: deepening automation and AI-native workflows across core fund operations, including capital calls, compliance, distributions and reporting.‍
• Organisational scale: building a scalable operating model capable of supporting a broader range of fund operations across additional asset classes and jurisdictions.

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Hélène Falchier, Partner, Portage, said:"Portage invests in financial infrastructure that becomes structurally necessary as markets grow. bunch has built exactly that. Europe's regulatory environment is uniquely demanding; that headwind only intensifies as private markets scale. Enrico and Levent didn't build around this complexity, they built from within it. That combination of regulatory depth and service understanding is what makes bunch structurally defensible, and hard to replicate from the outside."

Konstantin Koenig, Principal, Illuminate Financial, said:“Private markets are scaling faster than the infrastructure supporting them. That gap creates both operational risk and commercial opportunity, and bunch is positioned squarely at the intersection of both. Levent, Enrico and the team have the fund-operations depth and execution velocity this problem demands, and we're proud to back them in building the operating system for the next generation of European private capital.”

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bunch is the leading end-to-end infrastructure for European private markets. By combining AI-powered automation with deep domain expertise, bunch provides a single source of truth that replaces outdated, fragmented processes. Founded in 2021 and based in Berlin, London, Amsterdam and Luxembourg, the company operates across Europe, enabling fund managers and institutional investors to manage the entire fund lifecycle—from digital investor onboarding and capital calls to fund administration, fund accounting, and tax reporting. Today, bunch manages over 500 investment structures for more than 150 asset managers across all major European jurisdictions.

Portage is a global investment platform focused on fintech and financial services with over US$5.7B under management, 115+ portfolio companies, and 25+ investment professionals. Our firm has offices in Canada, the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. Our team partners with ambitious companies across all stages, through Portage Ventures and Portage Capital Solutions. We provide flexible capital and deliver a global network of investors, commercial partners, advisors, and value creation experts. Our dedicated value creation team provides portfolio companies with hands-on support in go-to-market, tech and cyber, business acceleration and M&A, and partnerships to accelerate their paths to success. With deep industry knowledge and entrepreneurial experience, Portage is committed to supporting the leaders who are reshaping financial services. Portage is a platform within Sagard, a global multi-strategy alternative asset management firm with over US$45 billion under management.

Illuminate Financial is a specialist venture capital firm investing in early-stage Enterprise AI & Fintech companies. With teams across London, New York, and Singapore, we combine capital with unmatched connectivity to global financial institutions, helping visionary founders build and scale. For more information, visit www.illuminatefinancial.com