CVC Unplugged

My guest today is Michelle Gonzalez, the global head of Microsoft’s corporate venturing unit, M12. She joined me to talk about the strategic shift that M12 has been executing since the beginning of this year to align the unit’s investments closer with Microsoft, as well as the ever-growing prospects of generative AI, the resilience of other verticals like cybersecurity and the enduring appeal of b...

My guest today is Arthur Alves, corporate venture capital manager of Gerdau Next Ventures, the CVC arm of Brazilian steel manufacturer Gerdau. The venture fund was established in 2020 under in partnership with American CVC-as-a-Service firm Touchdown Ventures, and Alves was hired last year to fully integrate Gerdau Next Ventures into its parent company. The post Arthur Alves: Gerdau Next Ventures...

Increasingly, buildings are more than just bricks and mortar. Today they’re smarter, they’re more capable, they’re greener, and they’re continually improving. Few companies are doing more work in this space than Johnson Controls, and today I’m speaking with Youssef Mawad, managing director Johnson Controls’ CVC unit, JCI Ventures. The post Youssef Mawad: JCI Ventures appeared first on CVC Unplugge...

My guest today is Jonny Crowe, a lawyer by training whose long career has been tied together by one central theme: executing and managing transformation. This is something he’s done both as a member of the C-Suite within the structure of an organisation, or in an advisory capacity, for many companies including Cinch, BCA Marketplace, Naspers and Axel Springer, to name just a few. The post Jonny Cr...

Money, as they say, makes the world go round, and investments in financial services grew forty-fold in the decade between 2011 and 2021, from around $6bn to nearly $240bn. That is a huge leap, but according to today’s guest, Arvind Purushotham, head of Citi Ventures, it is only the beginning. The post Arvind Purushotham: Citi Ventures appeared first on CVC Unplugged .

Every successful business needs a strategy, and every business will need to innovate to survive. Strategy, of course, sets out long-term direction and intentionality, while innovation, by definition deals with new things, which naturally can be disruptive. So how do you moderate the two? Which of them informs the other more, and how? The post Debbie Brackeen: CSAA Insurance appeared first on CVC U...

My guest today is Miles Kirby, CEO of Deeptech Labs, the Cambridge-based accelerator and investor focused, as its name suggests, on deep tech – which is of course an umbrella term encompassing a broad set of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum, advanced materials, other advanced compute, and just about any technology that has not quite been commodified yet and still has subst...

Setting up a corporate venture capital unit comes with a lot of hurdles. You have to deal with a wide range of stakeholders, and you have to find a place to fit within the wider corporate structure, much of which is not necessarily well-versed in the value that a venturing unit can bring. The post Mario Augusto Maia: Cogent Venture Partners appeared first on CVC Unplugged .

The scale and speed with which the venture market has changed over the past year has caused some whiplash for startups and investors alike. All of a sudden, we find ourselves in an environment with higher inflation, higher interest rates, and much more difficulty being able to raise money, be it equity or debt. While the current venture market does represent a drop from the heady heights of two ye...

One of the interesting shifts that happened during the covid pandemic was in building things. Larger construction projects slowed down while at home DIY projects took off as people had to spend inside. This is but one of the patterns that Stanley Ventures, the venturing unit of Stanley Black & Decker, had a front-row view to, sitting on the intersection of construction and consumer goods. The...

Everyone needs to eat, and as one of the largest private companies in the world, Cargill has played a large role in providing much of what, at least in the US, shows up in supermarkets. But what does the future of food look like? And what innovation is needed to bring agriculture up to speed with the demands of a growing population with shifting views? The post Erin VanLanduit: Cargill Ventures ap...

Every business needs a space, but how will those spaces be valued in the future? Commercial real estate is in the beginning stages of some important changes in the way it looks, operates, shares its space, and even where it is located, much of the changes coming in the aftermath of the pandemic. The post Raj Singh: JLL Spark Global Ventures appeared first on CVC Unplugged .

Btomorrow Ventures (BTV), the venturing unit of British American Tobacco, is a CVC unlike the rest, in the sense that While the typical aim of corporate venturing is to complement and innovate on top of its parent company’s business, BTV’s main purpose is to help its tobacco producing parent to move away from its core product and into new categories that will create growth in the future. The post...

What does it mean to grant “unfair” access to a region? That’s what Wind Ventures, the venture capital arm of Chilean energy company Copec, wants to do for its portfolio companies wanting exposure to the Latin American market. With a wide remit that primarily straddles energy and mobility, Wind has been bullish on the energy transition and EV charging, among a number of other focus areas including...

Spinning a fund out of the corporate parent’s umbrella can be a tricky process. If done right, though, you can end up with a situation where you can enjoy both the benefits of being your own outfit and the advantages of close operational links with a big name corporate. You can have your cake and eat it too. This is where AEI HorizonX, the venture firm spun out of aerospace and defence company Boe...

There has never been a more crucial time to invest in technologies related to defence and security. War in Ukraine and growing geopolitical tensions between the US and China are bringing a new focus to an area that used to be taboo for investors. Global Corporate Venturing editor Maija Palmer talks to Ryan Lewis, partner at SRI Ventures and Tom Park, partner at BDC Deep Tech Fund, about why they a...

The world is changing, along with the way we look at it and experience it – this includes a merging of the physical world and the virtual one. This “great convergence” forms the basis of the newly unveiled thesis of NGP Capital, the venture firm backed by Nokia. The post Paul Asel: NGP Capital appeared first on CVC Unplugged .

Air travel is a notoriously hard to decarbonise sector. Next to heavy industry, aviation is the poster child for widespread carbon emissions. For United Airlines,… The post Andrew Chang: United Airlines Ventures appeared first on CVC Unplugged .

If it hasn’t already been clear for at least the past decade, there is certainly no doubt of it today: data runs the world. It… The post Andrew Ferguson: Databricks Ventures appeared first on CVC Unplugged .

I’m joined by GCV’s Kaloyan Andonov, an analyst and reporter who also happens to be a resident data guru, and has put together an extensive… The post Last Year in Data appeared first on CVC Unplugged .

Happy New Year! For our first episode of 2023, one thing is clear – defence is not a business like any other, for obvious reasons.… The post Dan Ateya: RTX Ventures appeared first on CVC Unplugged .

It is our last episode of GVR for the year! To close out 2022, we’re bringing you a recording of a conversation on one of… The post The Next Wave: Investing Beyond Earth – Spacetech appeared first on CVC Unplugged .

In all likelihood, you will be acutely aware of the energy crisis we are experiencing virtually all over the world. What you may be less… The post Oil and Gas Investment appeared first on CVC Unplugged .

What does it mean for a corporate venturing unit to be independent? Is that a structural dimension or a cultural one? What are the benefits… The post Should CVCs want more independence? appeared first on CVC Unplugged .

We’ve got a big, ongoing story that’s been causing serious ripples across one of the fastest growing industries of the past few years. FTX, the… The post The collapse of FTX – where next for crypto? appeared first on CVC Unplugged .