Failup

Failup Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests at pre-seed and seed stage in companies applying artificial intelligence to what it describes as system-level problems. The firm launched its first fund in July 2023 and positions itself as an "AI-native" fund, stating that it has built internal AI tools to support sourcing, operations and portfolio support. Its stated investment approach is "conviction before consensus," with an emphasis on technical, first-principles teams.

The firm organises its thesis around three areas: AI for Work (agents that work alongside employees to raise productivity and reduce errors), AI Advancement (infrastructure and data services for building, training, securing and scaling AI agents, including training-data providers and alternative XPU compute), and AI for Life (consumer applications covering time savings at home, learning, health and creativity). At launch in 2023 the firm described a broader, sector-agnostic set of themes — future of work, future of consumption, dynamic marketplaces, digital infrastructure and commercial climate tech — focused on mission-driven founders.

The portfolio spans companies in the United States and Europe, including Lotus Health AI (AI-assisted primary care), AfterQuery (human-generated datasets for AI model training), Paradigm (agent-based spreadsheet workspace), Ever Cars (AI-native electric-vehicle dealership), Pump (cloud-cost optimisation), Optivian Solutions (AI sales agents), ConfidentialMind (self-hosted generative-AI infrastructure), Bracket (corporate treasury platform), Nvelop (agentic procurement), Studio 555 (interactive interior-design experiences), BIM Engine (AI teammates for architecture, engineering and construction), Motives (automated qualitative research), PingYou (structural-learning layer above frontier models) and The Token Company (LLM input compression). FounderNest and Vested Health were named among its first investments from the fund.

Founding story

Failup Ventures was founded by three Finnish entrepreneurs and angel investors: Jesse Heikkilä, Topias Soininen and Oscar Andersin. Heikkilä and Soininen previously founded Playven, a SaaS sports facility management and marketplace company later acquired by Playtomic; Andersin worked as an Investment Manager at Helsinki-based startup incubator Vencubator. Collectively the team had built and invested in nearly 40 startups before founding the fund.

Business model

Failup Ventures operates as a venture capital fund manager, raising capital from limited partners — described as including startup founders, several of them unicorn founders, with Business Finland Venture Capital Oy as anchor investor in the first fund — and deploying it as minority equity investments in early-stage startups. It leads, co-leads or joins rounds and reserves capital for follow-on investments.

As a venture fund, returns are generated from equity stakes in portfolio companies; the sources do not detail management fee or carried interest terms.

Traction

As of 2025 the firm reported 29 portfolio companies located across San Francisco, New York, Helsinki and London, with holdings at both pre-seed and seed stage. Three investments had been completed at the time of the November 2023 first close.

Latest developments

The firm's website published insight pieces dated 1 September 2025 (on play and AI creativity), 4 September 2025 (a portfolio company, Zettascale, announcing a new name and progress) and 22 October 2025 (on measuring AI product quality), and reported a portfolio of 29 companies with a first-check range of $500K-$1M.