Antler's new ONE residency in Continental Europe will commit up to €500,000 to founders at inception, including solo founders who have no idea yet, according to the firm's program page. The check is large for a stage at which many investors are perceived to prefer a team or a product, and Antler says it backs people "before they've found their co-founder or developed their idea."
How the money is structured
The terms are laid out on Antler's Continental Europe page. "When we decide to invest, we commit €500K at inception," it says. "Those typically convert into around 10% equity at €5m valuation."
Only part of that is cash up front. Antler wires €200K immediately. Half of that converts into 8.5% ownership before the next round, and the other €100K is an uncapped MFN note, a convertible instrument that lets the holder adopt better terms offered to later investors. A further €300K, which Antler calls the "Antler Round Commitment," is not wired at the outset; it is pre-committed to help the founder close a pre-seed round.
The package also includes more than €650K in immediate tooling credits and more than €4M in total perks after funding, covering cloud, AI and infrastructure. Antler says it can provide up to €30M in follow-on capital through Series C. Its US page states there is no fee to join the residency.
Six to ten weeks, then a decision
The residency is based in Berlin, with Amsterdam as a launch pad, and runs two intakes a year, in March and September. Antler's own page gives no September 2026 start date. The third-party listing Starthubs shows a Continental Europe cohort beginning September 14, 2026, across Amsterdam, Berlin and Munich.
Complete teams follow a track of about six weeks. Founders who use co-founder matching spend about ten. Antler decides on its investment at the end, "after working closely with founders for 6–10 weeks," the program page says.
What it is looking for, the firm says, is "outlier" behavior, trajectory and a fit between founder and idea. It is sector-agnostic but wants a credible path to €1B outcomes.
A narrow door
About 2% of applicants are invited to join, according to the program page, which says each cohort has roughly 100 founders chosen from about 10,000 applicants. Those figures are Antler's own.
An older number came with the July 15, 2025 launch, when Antler said it had invested in the "best 0.3% of all founders that applied" across its European residencies in the prior year.
Why the check got bigger
The July 2025 press release described ONE as a doubling of the firm's investment model for the region, which had been €200K at inception plus up to €300K committed to the pre-seed.
"We're doubling down on the best founders in Europe - with double the capital and a bigger commitment than ever," Dr. Christoph Klink, an Antler partner, said in that release. "€500k at inception gives the best founders the best chance to raise pre-seed rounds in weeks, not months, and seed rounds in months, not years."
In a September 23, 2025 interview with Tech.eu, Klink said the firm wants to be near founders early. "When founders launch a company, they rarely move across continents. They usually build locally. So we want to be as close to them as possible right from inception." Great founders, he added, "build first and then raise."
Tech.eu reported that Antler plans to invest up to €30M per company over multiple rounds through Series C, though it often does not lead Series A and later rounds.
The firm behind it
Antler was founded in Singapore and made its first investments in 2018. CEO Magnus Grimeland, one of its co-founders, told Fortune on May 20, 2026: "Our ambition was to be the first investor into the world's greatest talents, no matter where they come from or what their background is."
Antler's newsroom fast facts, updated alongside a September 25, 2026 fact sheet, report a $26B total portfolio value, more than 2,500 portfolio companies and more than 12,000 founders supported. The firm lists five unicorns: Airalo, Lovable, PixVerse, Dream and micro1. Some of those claims come from Antler's own media citing outside outlets, so they are worth treating with some care.
TechCrunch reported on August 12, 2026 that Lovable raised a $400M Series C at a $13.3B valuation, led by Menlo Ventures and the Scaleup Europe Fund. Dream raised a $260M Series C at a $3B valuation on June 18, 2026, with Antler joining the round, according to the company's PR Newswire release.
In a January 6, 2026 release, Antler said it had raised an additional $510M across funds in the prior 12 months. It said it had backed more than 1,800 companies, more than 400 of them in the last year.
Competition and caveats
Entrepreneur First is the closest comparison, another investor that backs talent before there is a team or an idea. A comparison guide on VentureList says its US program offers $250K as a split SAFE in 2026, though the guide itself advises checking local terms.
Antler's own terms vary by region. In the UK, the firm moved to up to £500K from autumn 2025, with £210K wired at inception and up to £330K pre-committed to the first round.
Locations have shifted too. The 2025 launch plan named landing pads in Berlin, Munich, Amsterdam and Paris. The current Continental Europe page lists only Berlin as the main hub and Amsterdam as a launch pad. Post-investment office access in both cities runs three to nine months.
What founders get beyond cash
Antler's page describes structured introductions through Antler Expand, along with international investor events, among them a Bay Area week and a partner-level investor summit in Oxford for its European portfolio.
The firm's own research argues that growth-stage operator experience lifts conversion from pre-seed to Series A. That research is internal, not independent.
Antler's Continental Europe partners include Alan Poensgen, a Westwing co-founder, Ronald Jan Schuurs and Klink, who is based in Berlin. Applicants can also attend partner info sessions, which Antler lists publicly.
Klink summed up the pitch in a 2025 LinkedIn post: "Up to 500k EUR at pre-seed, 30mn EUR for the next rounds, 4 mn EUR in perks, solo founders and complete teams, one global platform." Antler, he added, "invested in less than 0.3% last year."
