Insider Brief
- Constructor Start selected 16 finalists from more than 2,100 applicants to compete for investment at its Sept. 21 Demo Day in Bremen, Germany.
- Constructor Capital will invest $100,000 in each of three winning teams, while finalists could access up to $1 million through the program’s investor network.
- The cohort includes startups in industrial technology, space, biotech, advanced computing, quantum technology and applied AI.
PRESS RELEASE — Sixteen finalists selected from more than 2,100 applications will present live at Constructor Start‘s fourth Demo Day on September 21 in Bremen, Germany, where the program’s investment decisions are made and announced live on stage. Constructor Capital invests $100,000 directly in each winning team, a confirmed $300,000 this year, in exchange for equity. Beyond that direct investment, finalists also gain access to further, potential funding through Constructor Start’s investor network of venture funds and business angels, bringing total available funding up to $1 million. The program’s picks already have a track record to back them: Demo Day alumni have raised more than $10 million in follow-on funding since last year’s cohort alone.
The finalists span industrial technology, space, biotech, advanced computing and quantum, and applied AI. What connects them isn’t the sector, but the selection bar. This is Constructor Start’s most selective and DeepTech-concentrated Demo Day cohort in the program’s two-year history.
“A funnel this tight tells you something about where founders are actually building right now, not where the headlines say they are,” said Dmitry Kurin, CEO of Constructor Start. “We’re not looking for the best pitch. We’re looking for the companies that will matter before the market has any reason to agree with us yet.”
The $100,000 check, and the access to further capital that follows, go to the finalists that score highest on mission and vision, product offering, price modeling, and scalability, among other criteria the program’s judges apply on the day.
Proof beyond the pitch
Constructor Capital and Constructor Start operate as one pathway: Constructor Start helps founders develop the technology, team and commercial case, while Constructor Capital evaluates companies independently for investment. Qendra shows how fast that pathway can move: the ETH Zürich spin-off won Constructor Start’s Demo Day in February 2026 and closed a Pre-Seed round as a Constructor Capital portfolio company less than a year later.
The pattern holds beyond quantum. Norwegian AR startup Ludenso, Constructor Start’s first Demo Day winner (2024), has since reached breakeven.
What comes after Constructor Start is where Constructor Capital‘s own thesis takes over. The fund backed quantum company QuEra before its $41 million sale to a Japanese research institute proved the bet right, the same early read on timing it now applies at Constructor Start. Two of this year’s finalists, Query Machines and Memstera, build at that same edge: Query Machines develops quantum-native AI models, designed for quantum hardware rather than adapted from classical machine learning; Memstera builds ultrafast photonic memory for AI accelerators, solving a speed bottleneck classical memory can’t.
“Science stopped being a debate a while ago,” said Marie Lepske, General Partner at Constructor Capital. “Quantum now carries five Nobel Prizes, three of them in the last four years, and quantum computing companies crossed a combined billion dollars in revenue for the first time in 2025. We’re applying that same read on timing to an earlier stage at Constructor Start: back the technology once the science is proven, before the market reprices around it.”
University roots
Two of this year’s finalists are spin-offs from Constructor University, the first time founders from the university itself have reached Demo Day since Constructor Start launched two years ago. CAUSENEX is building end-to-end predictive maintenance for industrial assets, powered by plug-and-play sensors and proprietary causal AI. Cytokyn M is developing a next-generation IL-1 receptor antagonist candidate for Long COVID and inflammaging-related chronic inflammation. Constructor Start now welcomes university teams from all over the world, students, researchers and professors alike, to build on their own research and turn it into a venture-backed company through the program.
Emerging Markets
Constructor Start’s fourth cohort includes its first startups from Georgia and Uzbekistan. Hi Holo, out of Tbilisi, is building a deterministic AI engine with no reliance on GPU infrastructure. Spaceborne, out of Uzbekistan, is developing microwave thermal propulsion technology for near-term satellite-thruster applications.
Constructor Start believes these markets hold significant, underappreciated deep tech potential, and that the program has the resources, network and expertise to identify strong companies in ecosystems where other investors have yet to build systematic sourcing capabilities. Hi Holo and Spaceborne are early results of that approach, part of a broader global sourcing strategy that welcomes founders from wherever technical depth exists.
Founders can apply at the Constructor Start program website.
Demo Day Program
The event will also bring together leading researchers, founders and investors for discussions on frontier technology, commercialization and venture building, including physicists Artur Ekert (Oxford), Eugene Demler (ETH Zurich), and Tommaso Calarco (University of Cologne), Lumai CEO Xianxin Guo, Qendra co-founder Martin Stadler, Matthias Winter, Managing Partner at Constructor Capital, and Serg Bell, Founder and Executive Chairman of Constructor Group.
Full agenda and free registration here.
