Innovation
European technologies and industries made investable. We identify and develop emerging technologies and investment themes with the potential to strengthen Europe’s industrial resilience, turning innovation into opportunities for proprietary and institutional capital to support European sovereignty and preparedness.
Four themes shaping Europe’s industrial future
Technological and industrial change is reshaping how Europe lives, moves and powers its economy. We focus on industrial innovation and technology and team up with industrial entrepreneurs and innovators to build Europe’s industrial future.
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Circular Economy
The resource play. Industrial technologies that turn waste, water and materials back into productive inputs, from recycling and re-use to industrial water treatment.
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Data Security & Integrity
The digital backbone. Secure communication and European-controlled infrastructure, together with trusted data across factories and supply chains.
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European Industrial Resilience
The frontier. Advanced manufacturing and digital factories that keep critical production capabilities and supply chains in Europe.
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Food
The essential. Technologies that make Europe's food chain more self-reliant, from water and farming to processing, storage and distribution.
From emerging technologies to investable opportunities
We identify emerging technologies and investment themes shaped by Europe’s evolving industrial and strategic needs, developing new approaches with the potential to become institutional-grade investment opportunities.
- 3,000+
- Scouted technology companies
- Leading VC fund
- Leading industrial venture platform AM Ventures
- 4
- Principal strategic investments
- European circular economy
- European security
- Food, water, communication, data, industrial resilience
Innovation, grounded in real-world expertise
Decades of building and operating businesses across real assets have taught us how industrial technologies get financed, built and run. Our dedicated team of seasoned investment professionals brings that experience to one task: taking proven industrial technologies from first application to industrial scale. Hands-on, in partnership with founders and industry, and with the discipline institutional capital expects.
- Early perspective Through our wide network, specialized industrial VC fund AM Ventures and our real asset investment platform we see emerging technologies and structural shifts early, before they are visible to the wider market.
- Grounded selection Cross-functional teams screen every theme against the group's operating experience across our industries and asset classes, testing what a technology can do and what it takes to run.
- Principal investment We invest our own capital and commit our own people. Hands-on and fully aligned with founders and key people, we develop the companies we back rather than only financing them.
- Scale-up focus Our sweet spot is the step from proven technology to industrial scale: institutional investment and management discipline applied to companies that are ready to grow, in the gap between venture capital and traditional asset finance.
- Proven partners World-leading industrial and financial partners carry development, technical delivery and market access, reducing execution risk on new ground.
Our European innovation portfolio
Since 2018 we have been actively building our footprint in this asset class across key European markets.
From research to industrial scale
We invest for technologies to reach industrial scale in future markets: rolled out as platforms or built out as critical infrastructure. We back the entrepreneurs who build it, we fund the first plants and networks, and we help them scale up in Europe and globally.
From a proven technology to a European platform
Europe is tightening what industry may discharge, and for many plants water now determines whether they can keep operating. fluvicon, an Austrian company, spent more than a decade turning forward osmosis into plants capable of treating wastewater that conventional processes cannot handle. We took a strategic stake and built a platform around the company, to deliver industrial water treatment as a service across Europe, and to scale it toward more than EUR 100 million in industrial applications.
The first plant of the platform is being built in Poland for a leading global food producer. It improves the production process and turns the wastewater into two outputs: a recovered product that goes straight back into the client’s production, and water clean enough to meet EU discharge standards, at a fraction of the energy and cost of conventional treatment.
Securing critical communications for the quantum era
The encryption protecting most communication today will not survive quantum computing, and data intercepted now can be stored until it can be read. Quantum key distribution removes that exposure: the key travels on entangled particles of light, and any attempt to intercept them can be detected. We identified the leading European team that turned this Nobel-recognized physics into a product, and invested to take it to scale.
Together with zerothird we are building pan-European quantum-secured infrastructure connecting Europe’s financial centers and digital hubs.
The first corridor connects Vienna and Frankfurt, a distance no quantum network has yet bridged. zerothird’s systems already run inside the fiber network of Erste Group, making it the first European banking group to pilot the commercial use of entanglement-based quantum encryption on critical financial infrastructure.
