Family offices are one of the most elusive parts of the tech ecosystem but, if you can convince one onto your cap table, they can offer long-term, deep-pocketed funding.
Most of the time, family offices operate as LPs, investing in VC funds, but some make direct investments into startups.
Investors tell Sifted that offices are getting increasingly involved in sustainability investing — often spurred on by younger generations at the family firms.
Using data from PitchBook, Sifted looked at how many investments family offices have made into climate tech startups in the last five years. The family offices are global, but only European investments have been included below.
Korys Investments — 12 investments
Korys is a family office based in Halle, Belgium. It invests the wealth of the Colruyt family, which owns discount supermarkets across Belgium, France and Luxembourg. It invests in companies working on the energy transition, as well as healthtech.
In the last five years, Korys has made 12 European investments, including Sweden’s Greenely, a virtual power plant startup which it invested in this year. Korys also backed Dutch energy system monitoring startup Sensorfact and German energy storage startup Voltstorage.
Noria — 12 investments
Noria is a family office based in Lille, France. It was founded by Christophe Guillaume, who ran WestHove, which produced cereal ingredients for the food industry.
The fund has an evergreen structure and focuses on energy and climate tech investments, alongside some media investments. Some recent Noria investments include French startup Newheat, which is developing renewable heat and waste-heat production units, and TLS Geothermics, also from France, which is developing geothermal energy projects.
Aurum Impact — 7 investments
Aurum invests the wealth of the Goldbeck Family, which owns a construction business in Germany. The fund focuses on impact investing. Startups it’s backed include Swedish startup Paebbl, which is focused on carbon capture, and The Landbanking Group, which develops natural capital assets.
Euphemia – 7 investments
Melbourne-based Euphemia was founded by Dominic Pym, who cofounded Up, an Australian neobank. Euphemia invests in startups from pre-seed to Series A, focused on climate tech and fintech.
Its European investments include British vertical farming startup Harvest London, which it backed last year, and Gazelle Wind Power, also based in the UK, which develops deep shore wind technology.
Stratel — 7 investments
Oslo-based Stratel is a family-owned investment company founded in 1976. It invests in pre-seed and seed-stage companies. Its European climate tech investments include Inherit, a Norwegian carbon removal startup which Stratel backed in January this year.
Evolem — 6 investments
Lyon, France-based Evolem invests the wealth of Bruno Rousset, a French entrepreneur who started the insurance group APRIL. European climate techs backed by Evolem include Sopht, a French startup focused on decarbonising IT infrastructure.
Franz Haniel & Cie — 6 investments
Franz Haniel & Cie is a German family-owned holding company based in Duisburg, Germany. It was historically involved in mining, coal trading and shipping.
The firm’s European climate tech portfolio includes vertical farming startup Infarm — which secured a unicorn valuation before declaring bankruptcy — and 1Komma5, a German solar startup, which also holds a circa-billion dollar valuation.
Johes — 6 investments
Paris-based Johes has backed six European climate tech companies in the last five years, including French startup Toopi, which is developing next-generation fertilisers.
Other family offices backing European climate tech — all with five investments each in the last five years — include:
- Celeste Management, a family office based in Geneva, Switzerland;
- Creadev, a PE firm based in France that invests the wealth of the Mulliez family, which owns companies like Decathlon and French supermarket Auchun;
- Holdix, a Finnish family office based in Helsinki;
- Kinled Holding, a family office based in Switzerland;
- Otium Capital, a family office based in Paris;
- Vaens, a Helsinki-based family office;
- Wermuth Asset Management, a German family office;
- Zubi Capital, a family office and asset manager based in Spain.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/family-offices-climate-tech-europe/
