50 million euros for the energy transition

The Vireo Electrification Fund team launches a new fund.

The former Innogy Venture team is receiving a total of 50 million euros from various investors to set up a new energy transition fund. The new name is Vireo Electrification Fund and reflects the focus of the investors. In future, they want to invest in "highly scalable early-stage European start-ups with a focus on electrification", as stated in a press release.

In December 2020, the Vireo Ventures team already invested in 19 early-stage start-ups, such as Liefergrün, Heycharge and Green Fusion. Four of the five Vireo founders previously worked at Innogy Venture, the venture capital arm of RWE. Based on this experience, Matthias Engel, Thomas Labryga, Felix Krause and Mischa Wetzel joined forces with Sven Heiligtag, who was previously Head of the Energy & Materials Practice at McKinsey, according to businessinsider writes.

The new fund is intended to expand the Vireo Ventures portfolio, says Krause in an interview with energate-messenger. The founders are following the classic strategy of venture capital funds: "We invest relatively cheaply in early development phases and then support the companies as they grow," says Krause. The exit should then follow after five or six years. In order to spread the risk here, the portfolio is set to grow to more than 30 start-ups.