CVC Unplugged

What’s it like to come into corporate VCs from the outside as a contractor? My guest is Bruno Meireles de Sousa, who is an operating parter at Bidra Innovation Ventures, the CVC of phosphate mining company OCPGroup. And he joined me to talk about what he’s seen going from unit to unit across a number of sectors. He tells me about his experience going from a very big corporate in Cargill – where he...

The whole point of investing is to hopefully get your money back at some point. But what if, as we’ve seen, the usual routes to doing that are effectively blocked off? Ideally, a VC might want to their startup to go public, welcoming in hundreds of thousands of new investors via an IPO and make their money back, at many multiples, that way. Or they might want a bigger fish to come along and acquir...

The ugly truth behind the AI revolution is that it needs to be powered from somewhere. Every query you make into ChatGPT or DeepSeek of Claude takes energy. Energy that has to be generated at a power plant, transmitted through the grid, and then used at a data centre to process and then send you the answer you seek. The demand for power from data centres is set to triple globally over the next 10...

Latin America is one of the fastest growing regions in the world, with a growing number of unicorns, an increasing array of international investors looking to get a foothold, and ever more savvy entrepreneurs. Ahead of next week’s GCV Symposium in London, I wanted to catch up with Bernardita Araya, manager of CMPC Ventures, the corporate VC unit of Chilean pulp and paper company CMPC, who will be...

Human decision-making – even when a lot of money is at stake, is not always rational. A lot of the time it’s based on intangible factors that influence people in ways that can’t be explained or justified by data or analysis – this is after all, the entire basis for the field of behavioural economics, and it’s not new information. So why, in an industry like venture capital, are people still led of...

In recent months we’ve seen quite a few corporate VC units either shut down, or get spun off, as their corporate parents grapple with how to deal with a tough macroeconomic environment. That’s not always the case though – we’re also seeing a number of other CVCs get launched, and some existing CVCs launch big new funds. My guest today is in the latter category – I speak to Ingo Ramesohl, managing...

Space has historically been the domain of governments – as that has changed and it’s becoming a more private sector-based commercial endeavour, something else has been changing too, and that is that whereas before space was a matter of launching things up where they will do something for a while, then they come back down. What’s emerging now is the prospect of an entire economy in space, for space...

Demand on the power grid is not getting any lower, in fact it’s growing faster than ever, and putting real pressure on the existing infrastructure. As more energy-hungry customers like data centres are coming online, better solutions need to be found to get more capacity through the system. My guest today is Pradeep Tagare, head of investment at National Grid Partners, the US-based VC arm of Natio...

The world is becoming, if not a more dangerous place, then perhaps a testier one. Over the past decade or so, we’ve seen an intensifying staccato of cyber attacks against critical infrastructure and other large facilities, which can, of course, bring with it huge financial and operational problems. It is increasingly not just a problem for individual companies, but for nations as a whole. Private...

My guest today is Talia Abramowitz, managing partner of Deloitte Ventures, a unit which has made the vast majority of its direct investments in Canadian startups and is well-placed to speak to the feelings within ecosystem. We talk about how startups and investors are thinking of navigating the current uncertainty, and how far along Canada has come in terms of its CVC activity. The unit has also j...

It is commonly thought that if you’re dealing with deeptech, that means you’re dealing with long horizons and long timelines to make your money back after an investment, but that is not necessarily the case, according to my guest today. I speak with Julien Fredonie, who heads up investments in Europe and Africa for Honda Xcelerator Ventures, the corporate VC arm of Japanese auto manufacturer Honda...

Innovation has long been one of the primary forces shaping power around the world. If your society is innovating, it will be more prosperous, more influential, and more consequential.  In today’s world, we’re seeing some shifts in global power dynamics between democracies and less democratic nations. We’re also seeing traditionally democratic governments on the backslide, losing faith and confiden...

Since the end of last year/beginning of this year there’s been quite a bit of optimism that investors will once again be able to count on the public markets for exits – with 2025 being highly anticipated as the year where listings will be back on the menu.  But that is now more uncertain – or at least the timing of it is – what with the amount of uncertainty that’s been injected into the market, f...

If we rewind to 2021, as we were starting to come out of the covid pandemic, there is nowhere you could look without seeing a flurry of investment rounds, many of them very, very big, backing Web3 and crypto startups. Everyone and their dog was looking to get a piece of the action. Eventually, of course, it cooled off but it’s been making a big comeback in recent months, especially since the US el...

My guest today is Greg Zavorotniy, who was managing director at what was then called BayWa Energy Ventures, and is now partner at rEnergy Partners. We talk about the advantages of being able to invest from outside the corporate architecture, the unit’s plans to raise a fund north of $200m to invest in cleantech startups, and their plans to bring in multiple LPs. The post rEnergy Partners: Charting...

Pilot projects between corporates and startups are a dime a dozen, just about any large corporate can do one. The problem, according to my guest today, is after the pilot – why is it that so many startups’ solutions don’t end up scaling within a corporate post-pilot, and what can be done about it? The post Cencosud Ventures: Venture clienting should involve skin in the game appeared first on CVC U...

Investing in automotive is not what it used to be – it has gone far beyond just what makes the car itself better, but of course to the entire ecosystem and experience around them. The post BMW i Ventures: Carmakers must innovate to navigate rapid technology shift appeared first on CVC Unplugged .

If you happen to be a human being, chances are you need to eat in order to survive. Agriculture is as crucial an industry to the maintenance of modern society as any other – and with a growing population and threats from climate change, finding new ways to produce more food is more important than ever. So why is it that investment into innovative agricultural technology has been so weak in recent...

Investing in fintech is hard wherever you are, but what if where you are is known for its economic and political turbulence? My guest today is Sebastian Spena, the managing director of Galicia Ventures, the corporate VC unit of Argentinian financial services company Grupo Galicia. The post Argentina’s turbulent economy is a forge for fintech founders appeared first on CVC Unplugged .

The past year has been a big one for fintech startups. The high interest rate environment we’ve been under is slowly easing, along with the uncertainties stemming from having to wait for the outcome of the election in the US. The huge amounts of capital that have been parked on the sidelines are now looking to be deployed, and momentum is returning to the fintech space. The post Looking ahead at f...

For every dollar that is invested in semiconductors, around $3 of economic activity is thought to be generated downstream – and in this case, downstream means absolutely anything technology-related. Just about piece of tech equipment you can buy today will rely in some way on a semi-conductor. The post We are in another iPhone Cambrian explosion for the chips industry appeared first on CVC Unplugg...

Latin America has always been fertile ground for fintech innovation and growth. Combining a young, tech-savvy population and a relative under-penetration of financial services you may see in other developed markets, there is plenty of opportunity for startups to feast on. The post Torq hopes to replicate Brazil’s fintech success across LatAm appeared first on CVC Unplugged .

Nightlife has changed in recent years. It’s not just the macro-effects of the pandemic – with higher costs of living and young people having less disposable income – but their preferences are also evolving. The post Best Nights VC wants people to meet in real life again appeared first on CVC Unplugged .

We’ve got a bit of a different episode again this week – Fernando sits down with GCV’s editor-in-chief Maija Palmer, who asks him some questions about a recent report he wrote for GCV’s Global Energy Council on the topic of getting first-of-a-kind cleantech technologies and projects of the ground. The post How to get first-of-a-kind cleantech projects off the ground appeared first on CVC Unplugged...

At the beginning of the year, I spoke to Bill Taranto, president of the MSD Global Health Innovation Fund about what he expected over the course of the year in the healthcare space. He had predicted that M&As would make a moderate comeback and more liquidity would be coming into the market from private equity firms, and that we would see a wave of consolidations taking shape as smaller “point...