Founded in 2016 as AO Invest, XR Invest is an investment group with representatives in the US, Europe and Israel. We focus on companies operating at the nexus of medtech and digital health.

With our diverse set of experience, we cover entrepreneurial, industrial and clinical expertise.

Thus far, the team behind XR Invest invested in Digital Surgery (acquired by Medtronic NYSE:MDT), Synoste (acquired by Globus Medical NYSE:GMED), Precision OS (acquisition/management buy-out), Augmedics and Medbelle.

XR Invest - About Us

Ulf Claesson

Ulf Claesson has, over the last 25 years, created and rapidly built sustainable businesses for large corporations, industrial investors and VCs in the Americas, Europe and Asia. Ulf has a senior executive background with Hewlett-Packard and IBM, managed spin-outs from Intuit and Ericsson, and has to-date initiated more than twenty M&A transactions.

Ulf invests in globally oriented deep tech companies and advises a selected number of international investors.

He is a director on European and US company boards, supports various private and government innovation initiatives and is a professor in practice at ETH Zurich.

Beat Merz, PhD

Beat Merz is a Managing Director of New Harbor Venture Partners and is also active as business angel.

After working in the medical device industry, He has been active for more than 22 years as a medtech venture investor working first at NMT New Medical Technologies, then HBM Healthcare Investments, Ares Lifesciences and AO Invest, where he was responsible for medical device investments in the US, Europe and Israel. Merz has managed investments in the US, Europe and Israel and continues to serve on several boards in the field.

Beat has a PhD in Biomechanics from ETH Zurich, and an MBA from the University of Strathclyde.

Dominik Mayer

Dominik led operations at AO Invest, the venture capital arm of AO Foundation’s USD1.5 billion endowment fund. In this role, he evaluated and invested globally in a range of successful healthcare start-ups.

Previously, Dominik worked at big data intelligence start-up Jumpshot in San Francisco, and digital health VC XL Health in Berlin.

He also co-authors a digital health newsletter to share recent insights about our industry.

Dominik holds a Master's degree in Business Innovation from the University of St.Gallen (HSG).

Prof. Amitai Ziv is Director of the Integrated Rehabilitation Hospital at the Sheba Medical Center, Director of Sheba's Allied Health Professionals, and Director of the Extended Reality Hub (XR-Hub) at Sheba’s Innovation Center (ARC).

Amitai founded the Israel Center for Medical Simulation (MSR) which introduces new standards and innovative approaches to health care training and patient safety education and is a world-renowned expert in the fields of medical simulation and patient safety. He serves as an Associate Dean at Tel-Aviv University Medical School where he holds full professor position.

He also holds an Adjunct Associate Professor position at Mayo Clinic.

Formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers (Tax Dept.)

Independent Management and Tax Consultant.

Currently Chairman of Rocky Treuhand AG, Board member of Ambassador Immobilien und Verwaltungs AG and others.