European AI startup kausable raises €12 million in Seed Round to build AI that needs no retraining

European investment in foundational AI

• €12 million seed round by European investors UVC Partners and Entourage to build sovereign European frontier AI
• Deep-tech startup with ties to Heidelberg University and Black Forest Labs
• Reasoning-first causal world model learns rapidly on its own and adapts to new situations without retraining
• Zero-shot forecasting model TipPFN validated in a joint research paper with researchers from Columbia University

AI systems need constant, costly retraining. European AI startup kausable raises €12 million in a seed funding round to solve this problem by developing reasoning-first frontier AI that adapts on its own efficiently to changing context without further retraining. The European frontier lab kausable has ties to Heidelberg University and Black Forest Labs (BFL), one of Germany’s most prominent AI companies.

The round is led by the German and Belgian investors UVC Partners and Entourage, with follow-on from the German investors HTGF and Mätch VC. kausable is also backed by various private angel investors from the AI industry and academia working at Black Forest Labs, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Noxtua, and the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS). The financing round comes at a time of increased momentum for strategic digital sovereignty, as current geopolitical instability demonstrates the need for AI frontier models and sovereign systems developed in Europe.

Frontier AI built and supported in Europe

“The world evolves rapidly, and so should AI. However, even the most capable current AI systems are very static in how they interpret the world and need constant, time-consuming, and costly retraining. With kausable we solve this problem by developing a new kind of world model that learns efficiently and robustly on its own and adapts to the ever-changing world. This offers huge opportunities across highly dynamic domains, such as robotics, the energy sector, and finance. We’re proud and excited about our seed funding from our European investors UVC Partners, Entourage, HTGF, and Mätch VC; which also showcases at a crucial time that Europe can and should build and support frontier AI”, states Johannes Haux (CEO & Co-Founder kausable).

“The potential we see here is enormous: nearly every industrial company runs on complex systems it struggles to predict and control – and today, applying AI to each one is slow and expensive. kausable makes that effort collapse. That turns AI from a series of costly one-off projects into something that can be rolled out across an entire industrial landscape – which is why we led this round”, highlights Andreas Unseld (Partner at UVC Partners).

“Most AI models are trained to remember the past. kausable is building AI that can reason about the future. Instead of relying on ever-larger datasets and constant retraining, they’re developing a fundamentally different approach: systems that adapt, infer causality and solve problems they have never seen before. It’s an ambitious scientific bet, and exactly the kind of foundational AI company we’re excited to back,” emphasized Pieterjan Bouten (Co-Founder Entourage).

From Heidelberg University to frontier AI

Johannes Haux (CEO), Dr. Benjamin Herdeanu (CTO), and Gregor Ramien (COO) founded the European frontier AI lab kausable in 2025 based on their research at Heidelberg University and their working experience at start-ups as well as in highly-regulated industries such as cybersecurity and the banking sector. They raised their pre-seed round with 1.5 million EURO in the same year and recently developed TipPFN, a forecasting zero-shot model for complex, dynamic systems that predicts “black swans”, rarely occurring but highly impactful events, in different domains such as medicine or the energy sector. kausable’s reasoning first AI (their “world model”) learns similarly to humans: A robust, universal set of intuitions (the “world model”) helps the AI adapt quickly to changes in its environment with little new information. The team recently also co-authored a research paper with experts from Columbia University, validating the causal reasoning architecture underlying its frontier model.

kausable will use the new funding to expand its current nine-person team of highly qualified experts and to advance its rapid-learning frontier model.

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About kausable
kausable is a deep tech AI startup founded in 2025 by Johannes Haux (CEO), Dr. Benjamin Herdeanu (CTO), and Gregor Ramien (COO), three physicists with ties to Heidelberg University and Black Forest Labs (BFL). The company is developing a reasoning-first foundational AI model that learns from minimal data, requires no retraining, and adapts to scenarios that could not be anticipated at build time. The team has published research in collaboration with Columbia University and developed TipPFN, a zero-shot model for forecasting rare, high-impact events in complex dynamic systems.

In 2026, kausable raised 12 million EURO in their Seed Round from the European investors UVC Partners, Entourage, HTGF, and Mätch VC. Additionally, kausable is backed by private angel investors from the AI industry and academia. 

More information: kausable.ai

About UVC Partners
UVC Partners backs Europe’s most ambitious B2B tech founders building new category leaders. From DeepTech to AI, the firm has invested in breakout startups including Isar Aerospace, Proxima Fusion, Q.ANT, Aleph Alpha, Tacto, Flix, and FINN. 

With more than €700 million in assets under management, UVC Partners invests up to €15 million initially across multiple stages from early to growth. Over the lifetime of the investment, €30 million per company can be deployed. 

Beyond capital, UVC Partners’ investment team is a “tech team for tech teams” – supporting founders in building and scaling market-leading companies. Through its unique access to UnternehmerTUM – Europe’s leading innovation hub – the VC offers a powerful ecosystem of entrepreneurs, key corporate decision-makers, and top-tier researchers. UVC Partners’ value-creation team provides direct access to a network of 1,000+ companies – potential customers and strategic partners.

More information: www.uvcpartners.com 

About Entourage
Entourage is an early-stage venture capital firm founded by Showpad co-founder Pieterjan Bouten. Built by operators, Entourage backs the next generation of legendary founders from pre-seed to seed across AI, robotics, enterprise software and deep tech. More than capital, Entourage brings first-hand experience in building and scaling global technology companies, Its portfolio includes category-defining companies such as Aikido, Lexroom and Conveo.

About Mätch VC
Mätch VC is a European venture capital firm based in Stuttgart, focusing on deep tech in the pre-seed stage. As a partner from day one, the fund is typically the first name on the founders’ cap table. Alongside capital (€50 million fund volume), Mätch VC provides a unique network of 91 family-owned businesses, industry executives, and founders—including names like Trumpf, Ritter Sport, and Festool. Follow-on funding rounds for its portfolio companies are regularly led by global Tier 1 funds. Its portfolio includes Black Forest Labs (Frontier AI Lab), Blockbrain (Modular AI Platform), Atmos Space Cargo (Spacetech), and XOR (Cybersecurity), among others.

More information: https://www.maetch.vc/