• Slimmer AI, Keen Venture Partners and Dutch Founders Fund (DFF) created the AI Ventures Alliance - Samen Slimmer.
• Aims to build 12 new applied AI startups over the next 24 months, funding and supporting founders in North-West Europea.
• Filling a gap in the market for pre-seed funding and support, whilst grabbing the opportunity made possible by the rapid developments in AI.

Amsterdam, 11 May 2023 - AI venture studio Slimmer AI, and venture capital firms Keen Venture Partners and Dutch Founders Fund (DFF) formed a first-of-its-kind partnership focused on early-stage (pre-seed) European startups that are leveraging the rapid developments in AI. Samen Slimmer – the AI Ventures Alliance - aims to fund and support 12 new startups over the next 24 months, by providing founders a unique combination of cash, AI software product and engineering resources, deep tech-entrepreneurial experience, and an unrivaled network.

JC Heyneke, CEO of Slimmer AI: “The time to build AI software products is now! The amazing pace of AI development is opening up unimaginable new use cases and potential applications. We’ve been building AI software for more than 10 years – and bring our expertise, team, and ready-to-use tech platform to founders to launch a fully operational AI software product in record time. Especially now, with the explosion in AI tech and applications, time-to-market is of the essence.”

The Samen Slimmer approach will give founders an unfair advantage – not only in the rapid building and bringing to market of their new AI product, but in scaling their product and business. Slimmer AI’s deep tech expertise ensures the product is engineered for scaling of data, algorithms, and feedback, while Keen and DFF provide capital and support to startups through the scale-up and growth phases.

To build the next global category leader, startups need more than tech and money. “We partner with founders that want to go big and provide them with the necessary capital, advice, support, and access to a European network. When capital, ideas, and good people come together, wonderful things can happen.”, Alexander Ribbink & Djoni de Vos of Keen Venture Partners.

Slimmer AI, Keen and DFF share a common value of putting founders first. Laurens Groenendijk, Founding Partner of DFF: “From Slimmer AI’s ‘people powered AI’, Keen’s ‘radically human venture capital’, to DFF’s ‘founders investing in founders’ approach – we are all intensely focused on supporting founders. This partnership unlocks a unique trifecta of benefits, granting access to all the tools that an early-stage founder needs: capital, expansive network and domain expertise. A true win-win-win situation for those building AI-driven companies.”

This alliance will be another important building block to strengthen the Dutch tech startup environment. “It’s exciting to see that players in the Dutch ecosystem collaborate in very novel ways to offer unique support to very early-stage ventures!”, Constantijn van Oranje, special envoy for Techleap.