Biometric Ventures CEO on Palm Recognition, Deepfakes and the Startups Redefining Trust

Vojta Diatka, CEO of Biometric Ventures, sits down to unpack what 2025 taught him about backing early-stage biometric founders, and where he thinks the technology is headed next. The full conversation is now live on YouTube.

Biometric Ventures was born out of Innovatrics. Founder and CEO Jan Lunter set it up because he believed biometrics deserved a fund of its own, one narrow enough to understand the space and wide enough to back companies that simply use biometrics well. That double focus still shapes every deal Diatka signs off today.

In a new video interview, Diatka walks through what that looks like in practice. He details pre-seed and seed checks between one and five million euros in valuation, an average ticket of around 100,000 euros, and something most VCs cannot offer, a direct access to Innovatrics’ own biometric technology. For founders who would otherwise spend months building their own facial or palm recognition engine, that access alone can decide whether a product ships on time.

A Record Year, and a Startup He Won’t Stop Talking About

2025 was Biometric Ventures’ busiest year to date. The fund closed four investments in total, three startups and one fellow early-stage fund. Diatka is candid about how he picks companies at this stage. The product will pivot, he says, sometimes more than once. What he watches instead is the founding team and how much ground they cover between conversations.

One name stands out. Vouchsafe, a UK startup that lets people without a valid ID get verified through a biometric vouching system, essentially having another verified citizen vouch for them, is the example Diatka returns to most. He invested when Vouchsafe had zero paying customers. Half a year later, it had 27 and more than £100,000 in annual recurring revenue.

The interview also gets into where Diatka expects the next disruption to come from. He points to palm recognition among startups, the EU’s expanding use of biometrics at its borders despite tough privacy rules, and deepfakes, which he considers the defining challenge of the next two years. There is a lot more in the full conversation, including the South African carpooling startup where biometrics solve a trust problem no algorithm alone could fix, and why fingerprint and iris recognition have struggled to attract the same startup interest as facial and palm technology.