A rock-solid foundation for growth
G+D Ventures: seeding tomorrow’s expansion at Cense
In summer 2026, when leading fintech specialist Cense sought a new round of seed funding to accelerate its ambitious growth strategy, it brought lead investors G+D Ventures and Rabo Investments on board, alongside a group of loyal angel investors. With the €6.5 million seed round in place, Cense CEO Dennis Wohlfarth sat down with G+D Ventures’ Andreas Barthelmes to reflect on the deal and look ahead to the prospects for growth.
“We’ve known one another for quite some time”, begins Barthelmes. “We decided not to participate in an initial angel round, but kept in touch and joined this follow-up round a year later.” Wohlfarth agrees, adding that sustained contact over a period of 18 months helped forge a common understanding as well as a shared interest in a rapidly expanding market.
Since 2018, Munich-based G+D Ventures is actively investing in the market. G+D Ventures is backed by Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) and the European Investment Bank. The VC focuseson what it calls ‘Trust Tech’ – emerging technology in the security, AML and compliance space. Cense becomes its 16th investment (of which 11 are still active), and with it comes a seat on the Cense board, adding G+D Ventures considerable insight and experience to the leadership team.
Pragmatism and transparency in action
“It’s important to have a diversified set of investors, and having G+D Ventures and Rabo Investments on board is a good sign of that. Everyone who has invested in Cense so far brings real expertise and a range of connections”, says Wohlfarth. “To us, it’s about more than funds and money.”
“The alignment between us and our investors has come naturally around shared objectives, so it’s very much a pragmatic approach and a well-balanced deal. We always put the company – not personalities – first and are transparent about the challenges and opportunities we face.”
Barthelmes concurs wholeheartedly, and is clearly invigorated by his new board position and the potential it offers. “We are active investors”, he says. “Board representation is important to us, but our overall objective is not hardcore governance… it is to nurture and help our investments to grow.”
Timing + team
What makes the perfect match? Describing the investor/start-up relationship variously as a ‘dance’ and a ‘marriage’, both Cense and G+D Ventures agree that the ‘people factor’ is paramount in sustaining any long-term investment.
“Confidence in the team is most important at the early stage of an investment, and it also helps if that team has experience of building and selling a business, which the Cense team does”, says Barthelmes. “You also need to identify the right market at the right time… timing is very important.”
As the deal took shape over a period of months, the principals met several times in person, including at a ‘team pitch’ at G+D HQ in Germany. Wohlfarth is unequivocal on the benefits of that close personal alignment. “It was clear to us from the beginning that there was massive value in what G+D Ventures bring, in terms of knowledge and partnerships”, he adds. “Personal relationships are also very important, as is the ability to understand and agree on expectations of where the company is going to go”.
“What stands out most is the team behind Cense. A team of serial entrepreneurs with proven market experience.”
Andreas Barthelmes, G+D Ventures
Infrastructure beyond crypto
To Barthelmes and his team, there is a significant market in prospect following what he calls “a massive switch in sentiment at banks around Blockchain.” Adoption is now happening at speed, and the trend towards tokenised financial products – such as deposits and custody services – is clearly visible.
“Cense is geared-up for the tokenised future,” he notes. “It has the right to play in this market as a fundamental component of the core infrastructure that banks need. Although pureplay crypto is on the bearish side at the moment, the interaction between fintech and crypto is picking up… and there is real momentum behind this.”
Automating crypto compliance at speed and scale may well be the starting point for Cense, but, as the market for tokenised assets expands, it is not its final destination.
“We believe that the market opportunity is compelling, driven by the accelerating institutional adoption of digital assets and an increasingly complex regulatory environment that demands solutions precisely like those from Cense. In this area, Cense has first mover advantage”, says Barthelmes.
Armed with its new investment, the challenge now for Cense is to monetise both market momentum and competitive advantage by closing more deals and bringing further European commercial and private banks to its customer base.
“This is not a crypto play but a digital asset infrastructure play that enables leading financial institutions to adapt. That’s where the value is.”
Dennis Wohlfarth, Cense
Automation… rooted in evidence and trust
With AI dominating much current tech thinking – and investing – the conversation turned to automation, but with significant caveats in place. As the market scales, it is hard to imagine the future of digital asset compliance without some form of automation, yet the inputs to the decision-making process must be pure, transparent and trustworthy. No smoke, no mirrors.
“Automation is a necessity, but you need confidence that AI is telling you the right things… you can’t just hope for the best”, says Barthelmes. This is why evidence and trust matter so much when dealing with banks, from the quality of source data to the role of interpretation. “We are innovative in the use of AI”, adds Wohlfarth, “but we don’t use it for providing evidence.”
The future? Focused expansion.
Now that Barthelmes and G+D Ventures have been welcomed on board at Cense and are firmly part of the family, what message would they send to prospective investors in future rounds? What, in a nutshell, is their investment thesis?
“The market is there – both in Europe and US.”, he says. “The Cense team is talented,and. there is a clear scaling plan in place. We now need to execute on it..”
“Focus is extremely important to us as we grow”, concludes Wohlfarth. “We are driven to help build processes at banks and build out trusted infrastructure. There are no distractions. We are staying true to our vision and mission.”
Ready to invest in tomorrow? Start a conversation with Cense.
Andreas Barthelmes is Principal at G+D Ventures.
Dennis Wohlfarth is co-founder and CEO of Cense.
