Jungheinrich Is the Sole Backer of Uplift’s €100M Fund

Jungheinrich put €100 million into Uplift Ventures on September 2, 2026, and it is the only limited partner. The Hamburg warehouse group is not a silent backer on a crowded cap table.

Uplift, the venturing unit Jungheinrich set up in 2025, opened its first fund to write late Seed and Series A cheques into Physical AI, energy, enterprise AI and logistics, mostly in Europe. Christian Noske joined as general partner the same day, and he has not yet deployed a euro from the new pool.

The Forklift Maker Is the Fund’s Only Backer

Most European deeptech funds of this size raise from a group of pensions, family offices and strategics. Uplift did not. Noske said the vehicle is a single-LP fund, and that the LP already believed Europe needed this kind of capital.

We are a single LP fund, and our LP had strong conviction that this is needed for Europe and Deep Tech, so it’s a bit of a different fundraising story.

Christian Noske, General Partner, Uplift Ventures

Jungheinrich is that LP. The listed material-handling group posted €5,502 million of revenue in 2025, employed 21,438 people at year end, and sells through direct companies in 42 countries. It has built battery-powered warehouse kit since 1953 and now has over one million battery-powered trucks in the field. The new pool is about 1.8% of last year’s sales, small against the P&L and large against a typical first-time European seed fund.

Chief executive Dr Lars Brzoska tied the cheque to Strategy 2030+, which aims for €10 billion of revenue and a 10% EBIT margin by 2030. In the note on the inaugural €100 million venture capital fund, he put returns first and the industrial use second.

DeepTech requires patient capital and partners who understand both industrial challenges and entrepreneurial ambition. Uplift Ventures invests in the next generation of industrial leaders, making them an important partner for Jungheinrich, firstly with world class financial returns and with immense value for our 2030+ strategy.

Dr Lars Brzoska, Chairman of the Board of Management, Jungheinrich AG, in the fund launch announcement

That sentence is the whole structure. The legal wrapper is a fund. The money, the sector list and the time horizon belong to a warehouse company that wants new businesses next to forklifts, shuttles and lithium-ion packs.

Seventeen Months From a Hamburg CVC Desk

Uplift is not a fresh nameplate invented for a fundraise. Jungheinrich independent company outside the Group on April 3, 2025, and put it in charge of international venturing, with Kerk Wichmann and Christina Hammes as managing directors. Wichmann still holds the vice-president of corporate strategy seat at the parent. Maike Steding runs venture clienting and operations. The offices are at Am Sandtorkai 27 in Hamburg and Linienstraße 86 in Berlin.

Brzoska said at the founding that the unit was set up outside the group on purpose, so it could move faster while still drawing on Jungheinrich’s plants and balance sheet. The 17 months since that note look less like a standalone VC raise and more like a CVC shop adding a chequebook.

THE ROAD TO FUND I

1. April 3, 2025: Jungheinrich founds Uplift Ventures and hands it the group’s international venturing work, with a promise to deepen the High-Tech Gründerfonds tie and add more fund stakes.
2. May 5, 2025: The group puts €5 million into Merantix Capital’s AI fund, a stake the company describes as sitting with Uplift’s wider venturing brief.
3. October 7, 2025: Hammes says the unit looks for innovation with a strategic fit, meaning topics that matter to Jungheinrich over the long term and also open new markets. Search fields are robotics, AI and data, energy and sustainability, and autonomous systems.
4. November 2025: Uplift takes its own compliance-automation startup, turnus.ai, to market.
5. December 2025: Uplift shows up as anchor LP for U2V, a new European pre-seed and seed vehicle aimed at university spin-outs.
6. June 23, 2026: Jungheinrich takes a stake in Navflex, a Physical AI firm automating truck loading and unloading, and starts field tests with large customers.
7. September 2, 2026: Uplift opens the €100 million fund and brings Noske in as general partner. He says the pool is fresh and has not invested yet.

Wichmann told the company’s own site in October 2025 that Uplift is a lever inside the Portfolio Extension part of Strategy 2030+, built to create value outside today’s core. The fund is the cash layer on that brief, not a break from it.

Cheques Stay Small and Follow-On Money Is Held Back

The plan is to back up to 20 startups and selected deeptech funds. Cheques into companies run from €1 million to €5 million, with most landing between €2 million and €3 million. Uplift can lead, co-lead or join, depending on the round, and it is holding money for follow-ons rather than spraying the whole €100 million on first tickets.

Noske set the geographic split at 80% Europe and 20% the United States, calling the Atlantic link a point of difference. The launch note also names Asia as a region for investments, so the 80/20 split is his working plan, not a ban on other geographies. He wants first deals out of the new fund by the end of 2026.

Twenty companies at €2 million to €3 million would use €40 million to €60 million before follow-ons and the stakes in other funds. That is a Seed and Series A cheque size, not a growth round. It is also the band where a corporate LP can sit close to product without having to underwrite a factory.

HOW THE FOUR SECTORS MAP TO THE PARENT

Hammes’s 2025 search list and the 2026 fund list are the same map in different clothes. Robotics, energy, AI and autonomous systems became Physical AI, energy, enterprise AI and logistics. Founders pitching outside that box will find a polite no faster than they would at a generalist seed firm.

Where Europe’s Deeptech Capital Still Dries Up

Uplift says late Seed and Series A is one of the biggest holes in European deeptech, the point where local lead investors go missing. The wider numbers, from the 2026 European Deep Tech Report by Dealroom, Lakestar and Walden Catalyst, show a louder problem one stage later.

European deeptech companies took in $20.3 billion in European deep tech venture money in 2025, 32% of all European VC, more than double the 15% share in 2015. Combined value reached $690 billion. Defence, security and resilience took 43% of that 2025 deeptech total. The report still puts the yearly shortfall at growth stage between $4 to $24 billion, and it says 70% of late-stage capital comes from outside Europe.

EUROPE’S DEEPTECH MONEY IN 2025

• Invested: $20.3 billion, 32% of all European venture capital, only 4% below the all-time high.
• Company value: $690 billion across VC-backed European deeptech firms.
• Growth-stage hole: $4 to $24 billion a year, with 70% of late-stage money from non-European investors.
• Large rounds: For raises of $15 million and above, 54% of funding is European, against 80% in the equivalent US market.

The Global Deep Tech Report 2026 adds a colder ratio. Europe produces 45% of the world’s deeptech startups and draws 17% of global funding. Series A to Series B conversion sits at 10% in Europe and 24% in North America. A €2 million to €3 million Uplift cheque can get a company through the round Uplift says is starved. It will not, on its own, carry that company through the round the data says is starving.

That mismatch is not an argument against the fund. It is the limit of what a €100 million single-LP pool can do, and it is why the industrial parent matters more than the gap slide. Jungheinrich can offer factories, docks and customers. It cannot replace a €500 million growth fund.

Noske Arrives From BMW i Ventures and NGP Capital

Noske spent more than a decade on the corporate side of deeptech investing, then took the seat where he writes the cheque. Jungheinrich’s launch note says he has backed over 40 companies across robotics, energy, space, autonomous driving, manufacturing and logistics. The Uplift team as a whole has backed more than 30 startups. Those are two different counts, and they should stay that way.

NOSKE’S PATH INTO THE FUND

• BMW i Ventures: Founding partner, the automaker’s venture arm.
• Alliance Ventures: Founding partner for the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi vehicle.
• NGP Capital: About five years leading European investments at the firm.
• Known bets: Space firm The Exploration Company, Swiss robot maker ANYbotics, auto-retail software Tekion, data platform Dataloop, and autonomous-driving firm WeRide.

He also hosts the podcast DeepTech Unleashed. The investment bench around him, Katharina Schild, Lukas Böttcher, Susan Suzart and Helge Jelinski, has time at Cathay Innovation, Speedinvest, Mimic Robotics and Start Global. That is a European deeptech network grafted onto a Hamburg industrial LP, which is the point of hiring him.

His screen for founders is blunt. He wants product obsession, the ability to explain the work so other people follow, and speed from idea to experiment. The inverse is a pitch that claims a 5% to 20% edge, cannot name what the customer uses today, or cannot name the champion inside a target account. “Product obsession goes hand-in-hand with customer focus,” he said.

He is already looking past model-lab hype. “I believe 2027 will go deeper into the supply chain of a lot of the hype topics today, data centres are the biggest infrastructure project of humanity measured by money allocated, and this won’t happen if we don’t invent new ways of planning, building, and running all of it,” Noske said. That is a logistics and energy sentence. It is also a sentence a forklift company can underwrite.

Navflex, Turnus.ai and the Warehouse Roadmap

Before the fund existed, the parent was already buying and building in the same four fields. The Navflex stake on June 23, 2026, went after one of the last manual jobs on a dock, loading and unloading trucks, with software that is meant to work in tight, changing yards without extra infrastructure. Field tests with large customers were already running when the fund launched. That is Physical AI with a warehouse invoice attached.

Turnus.ai, built inside Uplift, automates replies in regulated processes. It is a small software product next to a hardware group, and it is the proof that the unit will grow companies of its own, not only buy pieces of other people’s. The older HTGF relationship, plus the €5 million Merantix Capital cheque, plus the U2V stake, show the other habit: paying into specialist funds so scouting does not start from zero.

U2V closed a €60 million university spin-out fund in December 2025 with Jungheinrich, through Uplift, as an anchor LP, alongside Mittelstand investors. U2V is aimed at pre-seed and seed spin-outs in AI and novel computing, industrial tech and clean tech, with ties to universities such as TUM, ETH Zurich, RWTH Aachen, Oxford and Cambridge. The new €100 million vehicle sits one stage later than that, which is how a parent ends up with both a university net and a Series A chequebook.

Europe’s science output is not the bottleneck. The continent already produces nearly half of the world’s deeptech startups. The harder job is keeping those companies European once the rounds get large, and a warehouse group that can test a robot on a live dock is useful at Seed in a way a financial LP is not. Whether that help becomes a filter is the open risk.

Founders Get a Warehouse Parent and a Cheque

Noske said Europe needs dedicated deeptech investors who stay for the long run. A listed industrial LP can stay, because it is not raising Fund II from a new set of pensions every four years. The same LP also has a 2030 revenue target and a vice-president of strategy on the fund’s leadership team. Founders should treat both facts as true.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The LP: Jungheinrich is the only investor in the €100 million fund.
• The cheques: €1 million to €5 million, mostly €2 million to €3 million, into as many as 20 companies, with money reserved for follow-ons and other funds.
• The clock: Noske wants first investments by the end of 2026 and says the pool has not invested yet.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• First deal: Noske has a preferred first investment and has not named it.
• Fund-of-funds split: How much of the €100 million goes to other managers versus direct stakes is not public.
• Asia: Named in the launch note, not in Noske’s 80/20 working split.

The first close will tell more than the launch copy. If the opening deals sit on docks, batteries, warehouse software or robot arms, the parent’s map is doing what Hammes said it would. If they do not, the independent-company claim gets a real test. Until then, the only limited partner is still a forklift maker from Hamburg, and the money is still its money.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of a corporate venture fund launch and is for information only. It does not constitute investment, legal or financial advice, and it is not a recommendation to commit capital to Uplift Ventures, Jungheinrich AG, or any startup or fund named here. Anyone weighing an investment, an LP commitment or a fundraising process should speak with a qualified financial adviser, fund counsel or corporate-finance professional before acting. Figures and statuses come from company statements and industry reports published around the September 2, 2026 launch and may change as the fund deploys capital.