Jeannette zu Fürstenberg

Jeannette Catherine Fürstin zu Fürstenberg^[1] (born September 10, 1982 in Duisburg as Jeannette Catherine Griesel^[2]) is a German businesswoman and entrepreneur.^[3] She is known for her work in European technology, artificial intelligence, and industrial innovation. She is the president and managing director of General Catalyst.^[4]

Early life and education

Fürstenberg was born the daughter of Ghislaine Elsbeth Cecile Rademacher-Dubbick and her husband Peer Griesel. Her maternal family owns the measuring technology company Krohne Messtechnik (a German SME, or Mittelstand, which is recognized as a "hidden champion").^[5][6][7]

Fürstenberg studied communications and economics at LMU Munich. She studied economics at the ESCP Business School in Paris, graduating with a master's degree from the ESCP Business School.^[8] She completed a doctorate in business administration with a focus in entrepreneurship and art during the Renaissance at the Free University of Berlin.^[9][8]

Career

Following her studies, she has worked for Ernst & Young, Synthesis, and AXA.

In 2011, Fürstenberg and her husband founded Fürstenberg Zeitgenössisch. The project consists of a fellowship programme, annual temporary exhibitions and the establishment of a small collection. The focus is on young, emerging artists who have distinguished themselves in recent years through new concepts and languages of form and have in this context become the focus of international discourse.^[10][11]

La Famiglia

Fürstenberg has been active in the start-up ecosystem as co-founder, investor and advisor since 2013.^[12][13][14]

In 2016, she co-founded La Famiglia VC, a European-based venture capital fund investing in early stage tech companies across Europe and the US.^[15][16] Her co-founder was Robert Lacher. Later she ran the firm together with Judith Dada.^[17]

Coming from an industrial background herself, she designed La Famiglia as a bridge between the world of startup founders and established Mittelstand companies.^[18] Her fund gathered the support of industrial families, including Viessmann, Miele, Siemens, Conrad and Fürstenberg from Germany, as well as Solvay from Belgium and Swarovski from Austria.^[19] Later, seeing the potential of this approach, the firms of German-American venture capitalist Peter Thiel recommended La Famiglia to act as a bridge between U.S. startups and European industrial companies, so both could gain access to the other side's networks and technology.^[20]

Zu Fürstenberg sits on the board of German defense unicorn Helsing and French LLM unicorn Mistral AI.^[21]

In October 2025, Torsten Reil, cofounder and co-CEO of Helsing, recalled that, only five years before, it was impossible to get funding for defense startups from European venture capitalists. Zu Fürstenberg wanted to invest in Helsing in 2021 but European regulations barred her fund (La Famiglia) from investing in military-affiliated companies, so she invested with her own money. Finanz trend remarks that European startups need American venture capitalists not only because of money, but also experience, while there is a trend of European investors like zu Fürstenberg returning home, because American regulations restrict foreign investors in investing in military and classified technologies.^[22] La Famiglia (with zu Fürstenberg also investing personally) managed to invest in Helsing in 2023 (Series B).^[23]

La Famiglia merged with American VC firm General Catalyst in 2023, after which zu Fürstenberg became a managing director at the latter, overseeing its European business.^[24][25]

General Catalyst

Zu Fürstenberg and her firm General Catalyst lead the EU's AI Champions initiative. The initiative brings together 120 European companies across Europe, aiming to make Europe a global AI leader through coordinating efforts across industry, technology, capital and policy. This group of companies, led by General Catalyst, consists of startups such as Black Forest Labs, Mistral AI, Mirakl and Personio, and incumbents such as Deutsche Bank, L'Oréal, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, SAP, Volkswagen Group, Siemens and Spotify.^[26][27]

On the initiative's official website, the mission statement written by her reads:

The initiative aims to frame a positive vision for Europe by mobilizing talent and capital, accelerating AI adoption in established industries, and increasing European companies’ competitiveness. Led by General Catalyst, our mission is to foster a resilient partnership between incumbents and technology providers to unlock Europe’s full potential in AI. Europe can seize a generational opportunity by leading in applied AI, integrating it into Europe’s industrial base to boost productivity, resilience, and economic sovereignty, especially in key sectors like manufacturing, energy, and defense.

To support this vision, General Catalyst's report ‘An Ambitious Agenda for European AI’ provides a strategic blueprint for Europe's path to AI leadership.^[28]

In 2025, in an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Fürstenberg said that in the area of artificial intelligence, Germany and Europe should not just think about making progress, but actually winning the global race. She called for Germans and Europeans not to be intimidated by American and Chinese megaprojects such as the $500 billion Stargate project. She explained that in the first wave of internet technology development, European had not been able to catch up due to the fragmented markets in Europe, but AI would open new possibilities.^[29]

Awards

• 2025: Number 8 on the Forbes list ″The Midas List Europe: Top Tech Investors″^[30]

Publications

• ″Die Wechselwirkung zwischen unternehmerischer Innovation und Kunst″, 2012 (German), ISBN 978-3-8349-4508-2
• ″Europe's New Renaissance″, with Inge Kloepfer, 2025, ISBN 978-3-492-07499-5

Personal life

On 16 September 2010 she married Christian Prinz zu Fürstenberg (b. 1977) in a civil ceremony in Donaueschingen.^{[31][15][32][33]}

She began playing polo in 2010, and co-founded the Fürstenberg Polo Club with her husband later that year.^[34][35] She speaks five languages.^[36] She is influenced in both artistic taste and business thinking by her grandfather, the entrepreneur and painter Kristian Rademacher-Dubbick, who gave up his artistic career to take over the family business after the Second World War.^[37][38]

In 2026, zu Fürstenberg said that, she always feels like she never belongs to one circle, which happened when she moved from her family's industrial business world to the academia, when she married into a 800-year-old royal family, and when she works in the Silicon Valley.^[36]