Jeannette zu Fürstenberg


Jeannette Catherine Prinzessin zu Fürstenberg is a German businesswoman and entrepreneur.

Early life and education

Fürstenberg was born as a daughter of Ghislaine Elsbeth Cecile Rademacher-Dubbick and her husband Peer Griesel. Her paternal family is originally from Duisburg and owns the measuring technology company Krohne Messtechnik.
Fürstenberg studied communications and economics at the University of Munich, and economics in London and Paris, graduating with a master's degree from the ESCP Business School. She completed a doctorate in business administration with a focus in entrepreneurship and art during the Renaissance at the Free University of Berlin.

Career

She has worked for Ernst & Young, Synthesis, and AXA. She is founding partner of La Famiglia VC, a European-based venture capital fund investing in early stage tech companies across Europe and the US. Fürstenberg has been active in the start-up ecosystem as co-founder, investor and advisor since 2013.
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.
La Famiglia merged with American VC firm General Catalyst in 2023, after which Fürstenberg became a managing director at the latter, overseeing its European business.
Fürstenberg sits on the board of German defense unicorn Helsing and French LLM unicorn Mistral AI.
She 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.
On the initiative's official website, the mission statement written by her reads:
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.

Awards

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

Publications

  • with Inge Kloepfer: ″Europe's New Renaissance″, 2025, ISBN 978-3492074995

Personal life

On 16 September 2010 she married Christian Prinz zu Fürstenberg in a civil ceremony in Donaueschingen. They had a religious ceremony on 25 September 2010 in Rome. At the time of their marriage, her husband was the heir apparent of his father, Heinrich Fürst zu Fürstenberg. They have four children.
She began playing polo in 2010, and co-founded the Fürstenberg Polo Club with her husband later that year.