Jeannette zu Fürstenberg

Jeannette zu Fürstenberg is President and Managing Director of General Catalyst, the global investment and transformation company, where she leads its European business. She is also Founding Partner of La Famiglia VC, which she built into one of Europe's leading early-stage platforms before its merger with General Catalyst in 2023. Her early investments include Applied Intuition, Deel, Legora, Mistral, and Ramp. 

She leads the EU AI Champions Initiative, which brings together over 140 European companies (including Mistral, SAP, Deutsche Bank, Siemens, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen) to accelerate AI adoption and coordinate industrial, capital, and policy efforts across Europe. She moderated a roundtable on Applied AI hosted jointly by French President Emmanuel Macron and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and was awarded Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite in July 2026 (French National Order of Merit) for her role in advancing European AI innovation and Franco-German cooperation.

She co-authored the SPARTA Papers, which outline a concrete path to strengthen Europe’s strategic autonomy in defence and resilience.

She serves on the boards of Helsing, Legora, Mistral, and Parloa, and is a member of the Board of Governors of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. In 2025, Forbes ranked her eighth on its Midas List Europe of top technology investors and in 2026, she made her debut on the Midas Global List. 

She is the co-author, with Inge Kloepfer, of the award-winning book Europe's New Renaissance, which sets out a vision for European reinvention grounded in science, innovation, and industry. In 2011, she founded Fürstenberg Zeitgenössisch, a contemporary art foundation and artist grant programme.

Fürstenberg studied communications and economics at LMU Munich and economics at ESCP Business School in Paris. She holds a PhD in Philosophy and Entrepreneurship from Freie Universität Berlin.