The Infrastructure Behind Europe's AI Infrastructure: How Merantix Builds on bunch

Merantix Capital is a Berlin-based venture capital firm and part of the broader Merantix ecosystem. This ecosystem is a platform of companies and initiatives dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence across Europe.The firm brings together experienced founders, operators, and researchers. Its leadership includes:

• Adrian Locher: Co-Founder & General Partner, a serial entrepreneur who has helped build and scale more than 20 companies.
• Dr. Rasmus Rothe: Co-Founder & General Partner, a leading researcher in computer vision and deep learning and founding board member of the German AI Association.
• Nicole Büttner:  Founding Partner, entrepreneur and sits in the advisory board of Merantix Momentum.

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The Merantix AI Fund focuses on backing AI-native companies at the earliest stages, investing in founders building applied artificial intelligence solutions that address meaningful industry challenges. With ticket sizes ranging from €500k to €3M, the team partners closely with entrepreneurs who combine deep domain expertise with a clear perspective on why their technology matters now.

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As the fund grew, so did its operational complexity. What began as a new fund quickly expanded into a platform managing €133.4M in assets, across multiple LPs, and 9 closing rounds. Supporting this growth required operational infrastructure capable of scaling alongside the fund provided by bunch.

When the Merantix AI Fund began expanding, its operational processes were still largely structured around manual workflows. At the same time, the fund was scaling rapidly. Fund II launched with an initial €30M and quickly grew toward €100M across nine closings and a growing LP base. With every new investor, the complexity of managing the fund increased. Investor data, portfolio information, capital calls and reporting processes were handled across multiple tools and workflows. Preparing investor reports required gathering updates from portfolio companies, structuring reports manually and coordinating distribution to LPs. As the fund matured, these processes became increasingly difficult to manage efficiently.

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Migrating mid-fund is not a decision any manager takes lightly. As Oliver Schmied, CFO, reflects: "changing administrators during the life of a fund affects historic investor data, capital accounts, documents, reporting processes and the LP experience. You worry that the transition will create more work than it removes, or that investors will be confused by a new system." 

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That perceived migration risk was the team's main hesitation but looking back, Oliver shares: "we probably overestimated the short-term disruption and underestimated the ongoing cost of maintaining fragmented processes. Once the migration was complete, the benefits of having a consistent data set, document archive and investor interface became very clear."

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The team began looking for a more structured operational system that could support a growing LP base while simplifying fund administration and reporting.

Merantix chose bunch for the fund administration platform itself, drawn to a single system built to remove friction rather than add it. "We chose bunch because they consistently deliver a high level of service," says Oliver Schmied, CFO. "The deep integration of fund administration, finance and tax also materially reduces operational effort on our side. Instead of coordinating multiple providers and reconciling data across different systems, we can manage the fund through one integrated platform."

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That relationship gave Merantix the confidence to move fast when bunch tax launched. Merantix was one of the first funds to publicly back the product. "We already knew the people behind bunch tax and trusted both the team and their ability to execute," Oliver says. "That made us comfortable adopting a new product early." The operational case followed the trust: because fund administration, accounting and tax all run on the same underlying fund and investor data, bringing tax onto the same platform removed another layer of manual handoffs and reconciliation that would otherwise sit between separate providers.

bunch now runs the full investor lifecycle for Merantix in a single system: onboarding, subscription documents, KYC, the LP register, regulatory reporting, resolutions, distributions and the underlying audit trail. KYC is a clear example of the operational load this removes. Investors submit their information through bunch, an external provider carries out the review, and Merantix receives a risk assessment with any follow-up managed inside the same platform, rather than tracked manually across a large and varied LP base.

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Oliver sums up the model this way: "It is not one individual feature. It is how deeply the platform sits between the fund, the investors and the different legal, tax, accounting and compliance providers."

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The clearest dividend shows up in reporting, one of the few touchpoints every LP has with the fund, and one that shapes how the fund itself is perceived. Consistent, on-time reporting builds a specific kind of trust: LPs know when information is coming, where to find it, and that it comes from a repeatable process, which cuts down the individual questions and follow-ups that pile up when everyone is working from different numbers. One late report will not define a fund, but as Oliver puts it: "repeated delays, inconsistencies or different versions of the same numbers create uncertainty very quickly." Reliability compounds the other way too: it signals institutional quality, and existing LPs carry that impression into how they judge the manager the next time it raises a fund.

For Merantix, the relationship has moved past a vendor arrangement into something closer to an operating partnership, the natural next step after replacing a fragmented, multi-provider setup with one system that already spans admin, finance and tax.

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