We invest in innovative companies that we think can change the world
We bring intelligence, experience, connections and smart financial investment to the table.
We invest in cutting-edge companies across Europe that are changing the world.
We are driven by the belief that innovation offers compelling answers to the most pressing problems facing the world – achieving sustainable prosperity.
Connect with ETF Partners.
We'd love to hear from you. Drop us an email, give us a call or follow us on LinkedIn, Medium or Twitter.
We are driven by the belief that innovation offers compelling answers to the most pressing problems facing the world – achieving sustainable prosperity.
Comments Off on ETF Partners Newsletter – Issue #6
The latest ETF Newsletter has landed! In this edition, we announce a new addition to the team, a flurry of inspiring portfolio news, and an insightful article from our Head of IR and Sustainability, Zoe VanderWolk, and much more.
Comments Off on ETF portfolio company Greenbird attracts new investors for its big data integration platform
Greenbird Secures €5 million Series B funding to Drive Digitalization within the Energy Industry
Greenbird Integration Technology has secured funding from new investors EnBW New Ventures and nysno and existing investor ETF for the continued growth and expansion of its market leading Utilihive big data integration platform.
Oslo, 29th September 2020
Greenbird Integration Technology has secured €5 million series B funding enabling the company to further expand the international growth of its game changing Utilihive digital integration hub.
Through its cloud-native technical infrastructure platform and pre-configured integration content, Greenbird is the leading domain specific iPaaS provider to the utilities industry. In this rapidly evolving area of technology, this investment will fund the development of further innovative Utilihive capabilities.
The investment will also allow the Oslo-based company to grow its ecosystem of cutting-edge technology partners, providing an improved network of integrated data services to utility customers.
“Building on our success in establishing Utilihive as the leading Energy Data Integration Hub used by utilities in Scandinavia, Europe, the Middle- East and Asia, we will now move even faster to the next phase on our growth journey,” said Thorsten Heller, CEO of Greenbird Integration Technology AS. “With the help from EnBW New Ventures (ENV), Nysnø and our existing investor, ETF, we will now intensify our engagements with strategic partners, strengthen our presence and engineering capacity in emerging regions and further innovate Utilihive towards becoming the Energy Data Mesh that helps utilities realize the Sustainable Development Goals and to drive the energy transition.”
Two new investors, ENV and Nysnø join existing investor ETF Partners in this round of funding. All of the organizations share with Greenbird a vision of future IT infrastructure development. An architecture that can support the innovation and changing business models essential to the future of energy utilities.
Holger Wagner, Senior Investment Manager at EnBW New Ventures GmbH (ENV) said,
“Over the last few years, we have seen a strong development in corporate IT, not only in the utility space, towards decentralized, API-controlled application modules. In order to achieve a consistent view on the fragmented stored data, there is a need for integration. Greenbird’s iPaaS solution helps to significantly reduce integration efforts and shorten project runtimes.”
ENV is joined by Nysnø Climate Investments, a Norwegian state-owned company which invests in companies with profitable and smart solutions to climate change.
“The energy transition will require a much smarter, more reliant and agile grid. This data-driven revolution is happening now. Utilities are speeding to adapt and create value from new business models, but have to spend too much time collecting, cleaning and structuring data. Greenbird’s Utilihive software solves this, so that utilities significantly reduce lead time from data-capture to added value”, says Eivind Egeland Olsen, Chief Investment Officer at Nysnø Climate Investments.
Existing investor, ETF Partners invests in technology companies that make a difference. They have been investing in Greenbird since 2016 and are excited to fund Greenbird’s next stage of development.
A Proven Technology
Digitalization in the energy sector is gathering pace making a new IT architecture a necessity. Utilihive offers an Energy Data Mesh that supports utilities in data sharing, providing the IT architecture which is now essential.
Utilihive already creates value for utilities serving more than 50 million commercial and residential customers.
“We created Utilihive to overcome the inefficiencies that cause delays and expensive deployments for secure OT/ IT integration.” Heller continued, “We have demonstrated with clients like TPC in Taiwan and EnBW in Germany that we are able to reduce the duration of typical implementation projects and deliver in just a few days or weeks, where traditional system integrators would typically have spent between 18 months and 24 months.”
With Utilihive prebuilt connectors, preconfigured data flow and its data mesh architecture, utilities can easily embrace and utilize technology empowering digital grids, smart cities, eMobility, microgrids and distributed energy sources. This allows them to gain a head-start and accelerate their digital transformation, embrace the changes within the energy sector with agility and focus on their core business of offering reliable and innovative services to their customers.
About EnBW New Ventures (ENV)
ENV supports entrepreneurs to develop new solutions for a sustainable future – people, planet, profit – by leveraging our financially driven VC setup with the reach and skills of the corporate investor EnBW. With an investment volume of 100 million euros, EnBW New Ventures offers start-ups access to professional investor expertise and a customer and supplier network in the areas of energy and infrastructure. The startups that we invest in engage and scale with EnBW in its transformation towards becoming a sustainable and digital infrastructure operator. For more information visit https://www.env.vc/
About Nysnø Climate Investments Established in 2017, Nysnø Climate Investments (Nysnø) is a state-owned company that invests in companies and funds with profitable and smart solutions to climate change. With 1.7 billion NOK in assets under management Nysnø invests within clean energy, digital and enabling technologies, resource efficiency, sustainable demand, and the circular economy. Nysnø is based in Stavanger and owned by the Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Industry & Fisheries. For more information visit www.nysnoinvest.no/en
About ETF
ETF Partners supports talented entrepreneurs and management teams with investment capital and experience. Our funds come from institutional investors, global corporations and family offices. We create value by investing in technology companies that make a difference. We call it ‘sustainability through innovation’. For more insight into ETF Partners’ view on Sustainability through Innovation, please read our investor briefings. Environmental Technologies Fund 2 L.P. is supported by the European Union through the ‘Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP)’.
About Greenbird Integration Technology
Greenbird is the leading big data integration technology provider for utilities and the industrial IoT. Our flagship innovation, Utilihive, simplifies data integration and big energy data management empowering utilities to achieve Sustainable Development Goals faster by accelerating the energy transition. Based in Oslo, Norway, Greenbird enables Digital Transformation at utilities, powering the energy revolution. http://www.greenbird.com/
Comments Off on ETF Partners announces its new Environmental Technologies Fund: £167m for companies delivering sustainability through innovation
£167m fund to invest in innovative companies with high impact potential
British Patient Capital and the European Investment Fund provided cornerstone commitments
10 July 2020: London-based ETF Partners has closed its third Environmental Technologies Fund (ETF3) at £167m, to grow the most innovative companies in the UK and Europe that help deliver long-term and sustainable economic prosperity.
ETF’s third fund was raised from a combination of existing and new Limited Partners, including British Patient Capital and the European Investment Fund. The announcement comes as Covid-19 has highlighted the urgent need to address one of society’s greatest challenges – climate change, solutions to which can help power a strong economic recovery.
Since its launch 14 years ago, ETF Partners has invested at the crosshairs of change, identifying and backing high-impact, high-potential companies in digitally-led sustainability.
Investing at series A and beyond, and with the capital to support companies as they scale through multiple funding rounds, ETF Partners’ third fund has already supported companies in diverse fields such as smart mobility, ethical cybersecurity, microbiome AI and software, and energy efficient data centres.
ETF Partners analyses each potential investment through a unique impact scorecard that, unlike traditional ESG metrics more suited to large established companies, assesses the future impact potential of innovative companies, based on attributes such as alignment with UN Sustainable Development Goals, financial performance, and environmental impact.
Patrick Sheehan, Managing Partner, ETF Partners said: “One impact of Covid-19 has been to propel us into a new, digital age. Another has been to make us think about the world we now want to build, and how to make that world resilient and sustainable to address the challenges of climate change. These two themes, Digitisation and Sustainability, will define much of our future world.
Throughout this recent crisis, many digital companies have proved themselves to be robust, and they are also ‘scalable’ – able to grow fast in relatively capital efficient ways. So, by harnessing the right digital tools, the world can move quickly to achieve both sustainability and prosperity. That’s where we invest. By viewing the world through the lens of sustainability, we can see opportunities that may not be immediately obvious to all, but these companies can grow quickly to be large and significantly important.
Our investment in Zeelo is a case in point. It provides smart bus services for commuters. During the crisis, it adapted rapidly to also offer safe transport for critical workers.
Or Eagle Genomics, revolutionising how scientists collaborate to deliver products that help rather than harm the human and plant biomes, ensuring both bio-diversity and the ongoing vitality of species.
Or TravelTime where users can rapidly search journeys based on travel time rather than distance, enabling cities to pursue innovative urban planning initiatives and demonstrate that public transport is often superior viewed from a “time” perspective.”
Catherine Lewis La Torre, CEO, British Patient Capital, said: “Tackling the climate emergency while also sustaining economic growth is crucial. If we support the entrepreneurial talent in our country and harness the power and energy of their high-growth innovative companies, we can do this.
We see in ETF Partners a refreshing approach to investing in sustainability, aligned with, but also taking advantage of the accelerated adoption of digital technologies.
Providing high-growth innovative businesses with the capital to scale-up rapidly and meet international opportunities sits right at the heart of our investment strategy, and is well aligned with our long-term vison for more home-grown companies to become players on the-global stage. I’m excited to see how the portfolio develops.”
About ETF Partners
ETF Partners supports talented entrepreneurs and management teams with investment capital and experience. Our funds come from institutional investors, global corporations and family offices. We create value by investing in technology companies that make a difference. We call it ‘sustainability through innovation’.
ETF Portfolio companies include:
ELeather which uses waste from tanneries to make a high-performance green recycled leather product that currently sells into the transportation and apparel industries. In addition to selling to over 150 airlines worldwide, the company has a long-term, strategic innovation partnership with Nike to sole-supply a new super-material to the sporting footwear brand.
Telensa is the world leader in intelligent street lighting and is also expanding to other smart city applications. It has smart street light controls deployed in over 50 cities and 8 countries. Telensa’s intelligent control of city infrastructure and local government services enables cities to function more sustainably. For more insight into ETF Partners’ view on Sustainability through Innovation, please read our investor briefings.
Comments Off on ETF Leads a €7 Million Investment in Basemark
Helsinki, Finland, July 7, 2020 – Basemark, a leading software company specialising in graphics and autonomous driving vehicle software, has successfully concluded a €7 million equity funding round by ETF Partners (Environmental Technologies Fund). The investment will be used to accelerate Basemark’s growth in the field of Autonomous Vehicles.
Founded in 2015, Basemark quickly gained a strong reputation for its Rocksolid Engine – a world leading real-time graphics and compute software solution for mission critical industrial applications. In just a few years and with no institutional money invested to date, Basemark grew its business to over $10m in revenue and achieved profitability. Its customer base includes world-class automotive OEM and SoC companies.
“We are thrilled to have ETF Partners on board,” said Basemark’s Founder and Chairman, Tero Sarkkinen. “Over the years we have worked hard on building a category defining product and establishing strong international relationships across the automotive industry. This new capital injection will enable us to hit the gas and take us to the next level,” adds Mr. Sarkkinen.
“We are delighted to join the Basemark journey,” said Remy de Tonnac of ETF partners, who will also join the Board of the Company, together with Jarkko Virtanen, ETF’s Nordic venture partner, as Board Observer. “Road transportation is responsible for about 20% of total CO2 emissions and research has shown that the introduction of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) could help reduce transport emissions by as much as 80%, due to the advent of Transport as a Service and improved asset utilisation. We believe Basemark’s critical AI and software technology are integral parts of the AV revolution,” he added.
For Basemark’s CEO, Keith Silverang, the timing of the investment is optimal. “My own focus since I started has been on building up mature business processes and a world-class team, so that we can accelerate our core product development and scale up rapidly. That team is now in place. We have had very strong and profitable growth to date, and our goal is to transform Basemark into a leading software product company in the space in the next couple of years. The ETF investment will enable us to do just that. ETF will bring us not only the fuel for growth, but we can benefit from their focus on sustainability, professionalism, experience and world-class network.”
About Basemark
Basemark Oy is a privately held stock corporation registered and headquartered in Helsinki, Finland. The company develops Rocksolid Engine, a world leading real-time graphics and compute software solution for mission critical industrial applications. Basemark also develops system performance evaluation tools such as Basemark Automotive Testing and Basemark GPU. For more information, please visit https://www.basemark.com.
Basemark and Rocksolid are trademarks or registered trademarks of Basemark Oy. All other mentioned brands may be property of their respective owners.
About ETF
ETF Partners supports talented entrepreneurs and management teams with investment capital and experience. Our funds come from institutional investors, global corporations and family offices. We create value by investing in technology companies that make a difference. We call it ‘sustainability through innovation’. For more insight into ETF Partners’ view on Sustainability through Innovation, please read our investor briefings.
Basemark Contact
Keith Silverang, CEO
Email: [email protected]
Tel +358-40-566-7785
Comments Off on Hacking for good: ETF Partners invests €3.8 million in Intigriti, a leading cyber security company channelling the knowledge and power of ethical crowd hacking
June 2020 – Aalst, Belgium
ETF is pleased to announce its €3.8 million investment into Intigriti as part of a total round of €4.1m, the rest being subscribed by business angels in the cyber security industry. Intigriti is an innovative cyber security company working with Europe’s largest ethical hacking community to test the security of its clients’ technologies and systems. The investment will be used to fund the company’s international growth, and to develop specific programmes for companies delivering sustainable solutions.
By harnessing the “wisdom of the crowd” – specifically, the knowledge and experience of the ethical online hacking community – Intigriti offers its clients continuous vulnerability testing. Its community of hackers test the areas that the client has selected and receive a pay-out – a ‘bug bounty’ – only if they uncover a genuine vulnerability. Intigriti’s top-of-class managed services help clients design, manage, and quality control their bug bounty programmes, incoming vulnerability reports and pay-outs.
Intigriti was founded in 2016 by its CEO, Stijn Jans, then an experienced cyber security consultant and entrepreneur who saw the need for a company like Intigriti in the market. Together with his strong team in Belgium, Stijn has developed one of the market-leading ethical hacking security companies with over 75 customers and the most active ethical hacking community in Europe.
“Intigriti is directing significant resources to grow its support for companies working to deliver sustainable technologies. Sustainable solutions based on the introduction of new technologies such as sensors, cloud computing, AI, or automation are being developed and implemented at an unprecedented pace for people, cities and industries – allowing them to thrive whilst reducing the environmental impact. But a lot of these digital and decentralized systems are vulnerable to malicious hackers, as they hold lots of personal data, with backdoor access points to critical infrastructure,” said Remy de Tonnac, Partner at ETF. “But, hackers are not all bad, far from it! Intigriti’s “crowd” of ethical hackers are perfectly positioned to address the needs of the sustainable economy, securing vital sectors such as smart cities, IoT systems, smart grids, connected cars and the sharing economy.”
Stijn Jans (CEO) said: “We wanted to work with an investor that shares the same worldview as us – wanting to make the world a better and safer place. Our great and creative community of ethical hackers are helping companies develop and innovate at a faster speed, knowing that their assets are always being tested. The range and depth of Intigriti’s ethical hacker community guarantee our diverse group of clients that their systems will always be tested by experts in the relevant field.”
“ETF is very excited to be working with Intigriti as they continue to help companies tackle the reality of cyber security threats in an increasingly digital world,” said Kajsa Johansson, Associate at ETF. “We have been very impressed by their dedicated team, strong customer satisfaction and commitment to sustainability”.
About Intigriti
Intigriti is a pioneering cyber security company that channels its community of ethical hackers to test their clients’ websites and applications for vulnerabilities. Intigriti works with over 75 clients across a wide array of sectors, from small tech start-ups to large banks and airlines. The team works together with Europe’s largest ethical hacking community, and, with their strong focus on innovation and outstanding customer service Intigriti will continue to grow internationally.
ETF Partners supports talented entrepreneurs and management teams with investment capital and experience. Our funds come from institutional investors, global corporations and family offices. We create value by investing in technology companies that make a difference. We call it ‘sustainability through innovation’. For more insight into ETF Partners’ view on Sustainability through Innovation, please read our investor briefings.
Comments Off on ETF Partners Newsletter – Issue #3
Check out our latest Newsletter! This edition features an exciting investment into Intigriti – an ethical hacking company – and highlights some of the great efforts that our portfolio have recently made.
Comments Off on ETF Partners Newsletter – Issue #2
These continue to be fascinating times, yet we remain optimistic about our portfolio companies, and appreciate the hard work of our entrepreneurs and their dedicated teams.
Comments Off on The most stark lesson that the coronavirus “infodemic” has taught us about data collaboration – Eagle Genomic’s first series of blogs on COVID-19
