With AI, we can no longer trust what we see.
• Neither this photo of us
• Nor a convincing job candidate on a video call.
• Nor a photo documenting a car accident in an insurance claim.

All of these - and basically any document submitted digitally - can now be generated or manipulated by AI in seconds. This is no longer a niche problem but a systemic risk for the economy. And effective solutions face a massively growing market.


We are excited to share that Vanagon has led the €1.7M pre-seed round of Neuramancer AI Solutions GmbH, together with Bayern Kapital and a strong group of investors including ZOLLHOF – Tech Incubator.

Neuramancer is building a new layer of trust infrastructure for the AI era.

The problem:
Gen AI dramatically lowers the barrier for fraud.
In insurance alone, fraud already causes billions of euros in losses every year according to the German Insurance Association (GDV).
AI-generated evidence images and manipulated documents are massively accelerating this trend.

The problem extends far beyond insurance, e.g.:
• identity verification
• hiring processes
• digital evidence
• media

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2025 named misinformation & disinformation as the # 1 short term risk.

Neuramancer’s approach:
Most deepfake detection tools analyze the content of images or videos.
Neuramancer takes a fundamentally different route.

Their technology detects statistical artifacts left by generative models - invisible traces in the residual noise of images.

Think of it as a digital fingerprint of AI generation.

This makes the solution
• content-independent
• internationally scalable
• forensically explainable
• suited for enterprise deployment at scale.

Instead of returning a simple “real or fake” classification, the system provides mathematically traceable evidence - crucial for enterprise and regulatory environments.

Another key factor: unprecedented low false-positive rates, essential when deployed in high-stakes workflows such as insurance claims.

The company was founded by Anika Gruner & Anatol Maier.
Driven by her core value of truth, Anika, who has a background in media, dedicated already her master's thesis to the topic of authenticity.
Anatol developed the core technology during his research at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg and refined it in the SPRIND innovation challenge, where Neuramancer achieved top technical rankings. His work in multimedia forensics & deepfake detection is internationally recognized.

And with Martin Sondenheimer joining as Chief Commercial Officer, Neuramancer adds deep insurance expertise from roles at Munich Re and Allianz - highly relevant for scaling into the first key markets.

Today, media like DER SPIEGEL already rely on Neuramancer’s analyses:

Now, the startup is building an essential trust infrastructure for all industries.
We are proud to back Neuramancer on their mission to protect companies and society from AI-driven fraud.

Our portfolio company Sybilion is an AI platform that helps industrial companies outsmart uncertainty. It just raised $4.2M - and made it into Forbes Magazon 🥳 .
Super proud of this outsmarting team, consisting of Bjol R. Frenkenberger, Nuno Barros, Jonas Falkner and Friedrich Weninger.

We backed them early in the pre-seed round together with Floris Capital GmbH, SIROC, pura vida GmbH, EWOR and Dr. Marc Mogalle and witnessed the ARR growth from $17.5k to $700k in 12 months firsthand.

Sybilion is building an AI platform that helps industrial companies understand market signals earlier and make better operational decisions. Instead of relying only on internal historical data, Sybilion integrates a wide range of external signals such as commodity prices, weather patterns, global trade flows, port congestion, and macroeconomic indicators.

The potential impact is significant. Operational decisions influenced by these forecasts can affect 3–7% of revenue, often translating into millions in profit or loss for large industrial businesses.

The timing for such tools could not be better. According to Strategic Market Research, the AI-driven supply chain software market is expected to grow from $7.3B in 2026 to $63.8B by 2030, reflecting the increasing need for better decision intelligence in complex global markets (more info on that in the Forbes article in the comments).

Congrats to Semapa Next and VentureFriends for co-leading this round.

Best regards,
Axel, Sandro & Susanne