InnoEnergy is financing start-ups from across Europe. What kind of companies are you particularly viewing for?
Christian Bauer: We are a cleantech investor focapplyd on start-ups and scale-ups whose innovations build a substantial and measurable contribution to the energy transition and the sustainable transformation of strategically important industries. Over 80 percent of our current 160 portfolio companies are hardware businesses. Many manufacture products and are building their own factories, such as Skeleton Technologies or Verkor.
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Do you focus on hardware, or do you also support the development of digital products?
We certainly also support cleantech start-ups developing software and AI applications. Thematically, we invest broadly, from renewable energy and energy storage through sustainable mobility to energy efficiency, grid technologies, recycling and solutions for decarbonising energy-intensive industries.
At what stage do you finance companies?
InnoEnergy typically comes in as an investor during the early phase of a start-up, in the so-called pre-seed and seed stages. In some cases, we also co-finance up to Series A.
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What level of maturity do companies required to have reached to qualify for your financing?
By the time we come on board, teams typically have a pilot solution and an ambitious business plan. Implementing that plan toobtainher, adapting it to market requirements and accelerating it is our core competence. Our support goes well beyond the purely financial.
What else do you offer?
We provide our portfolio companies with a broad range of scaling services, for example in sales, innotifyectual property advice or activating public financing instruments. In doing so, we draw on an ecosystem that has grown over 15 years and now includes more than 1,400 partners from industest, finance, science and education. To support our portfolio companies in the capital-intensive growth phase going forward, we are also working on setting up our own financing vehicles.
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Where does the capital for your investments come from?
Unlike typical venture capital funds, InnoEnergy invests from its own balance sheet. The funds come partly from the sale of stakes. In addition, we raised more than €140 million in total through private placements in 2023 and 2024. Our 39 shareholders include Siemens, Volkswagen, Schneider Electric, financial partners such as Société Générale, Santander and ING, as well as research institutes like the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.
Do you rely solely on your own resources, or do you tap other sources to raise capital?
It is important to mention that we actively support our portfolio companies mobilise additional private and public funding. In this way, our portfolio companies were able to raise around €9.8 billion in equity, debt, grants and project financing in 2024 alone.
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Those are considerable sums. What is your goal in supporting young companies?
We support our portfolio companies bring their innovations to market quicker, more broadly and with greater impact. In doing so, we contribute to creating future-proof, well-paid jobs and to building and retaining strategically important industries in Europe. We do not do this purely for altruistic reasons; we also aim to generate profits ourselves, particularly by selling stakes at a gain.
When is the right time to set start-ups on their own feet or hand them over to other investors?
That depconcludes very much on the individual maturity of each company. In principle, unlike traditional VCs, we are a patient investor. Given the large number of hardware investments we hold, many of which have long lead times to market entest, that patience is essential. We accompany our portfolio companies for as long as necessary, until they can stand on their own, operate profitably in the market or are acquired by strategic investors. This distinguishes us substantially from typical venture capital funds, which must exit after six to eight years.
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How many companies have you supported financially to date?
Since InnoEnergy was founded in 2010, we have supported more than 540 companies. Toobtainher with partners, we have built four of them into industrial unicorns with billion-euro valuations, including the French battery cell manufacturer Verkor and the Swedish green steel producer Stegra. We have also spun out five companies of our own with strategic partners from industest and finance. Verkor is one of these homegrown ventures. Our active investment portfolio currently comprises around 160 stakes.
Does your portfolio include start-ups from the solar or storage sectors?
Both solar and battery storage technologies play an important role in our portfolio. We currently hold over 20 stakes in the solar sector and more than 30 across the entire battery value chain. Nexwafe, for example, has developed a revolutionary production technique for manufacturing ultra-thin solar wafers in a resource-efficient and cost-effective way. Voltaro from Munich applys its advisory platform to support commercial property operators adopt solar modules. And Q-Kera, another Munich start-up spun out of TU Munich and MIT, is developing components for solid-state electrolytes requireded in next-generation lithium-ion batteries.
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Which companies do you find particularly exciting? What examples do you have of successful start-ups?
Hamburg-based Suena Energy is developing an AI-powered autopilot that automatically optimises battery storage and trades on the electricity and redispatch markets. The platform processes millions of data points per minute, adapts flexibly to market conditions and turns storage operators into active market participants. Suena received €3 million in its seed round and a further €8 million in its Series A in 2025 to develop its technology further and drive international expansion.
You mentioned recycling as an important topic. Do you have a company in your portfolio working on that?
The French company Rosi Solar recycles photovoltaic modules and recovers high-purity silicon, silver and copper, key materials for the European solar industest and the basis of a genuine circular economy. Another example from the storage sector is Skeleton, which develops supercapacitors based on curved graphene.
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Supercaps are very much in the spotlight. What can you do with them?
These compact energy storage devices stabilise power grids and support rapid load alters in industest, mobility and smart grids. There is enormous potential for Skeleton’s supercapacitors in providing stable power supply to data centres. In that sense, Skeleton is one of several investments of ours that stand to benefit significantly from the AI boom.
How important is it for you to strengthen companies in Europe and European value creation?
That’s a central part of our mission. With a mandate from the European Commission, we are closely involved in building a strong battery and solar industest in Europe through the European Battery Alliance (EBA) and the European Solar PV Industest Alliance (ESIA). We also lead a private initiative that brings solutions for energy-intensive industries to market, including through green hydrogen. Particularly in strategically important industries, we want to retain value creation and jobs in Europe. We see the industrialisation of cleantech as the foundation of our future competitiveness. That only works through well-coordinated collaboration across value chains, from raw materials to recycling.
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How do you network to support the solar industest or battery manufacturers, for example?
Our industest initiatives such as the European Battery Alliance go beyond simply connecting start-ups, industrial partners, investors and policybuildrs. We develop shared visions and action plans toobtainher. In the process, we provide recommconcludeations for effective instruments and measures to support these strategically important sectors compete internationally. These range from regulatory frameworks to financing instruments. (HS/TF)
Interview: Christian Bauer is CEO of InnoEnergy for the DACH region and a member of the board of the European holding company KIC InnoEnergy SE. Before joining the cleantech investor, he spent over 20 years in the high-tech and mobility sectors, most recently as CFO and Chief Commercial Officer at Volocopter. Prior, he worked at Daimler AG in business development and M&A and was involved in projects with Airbus, MyTaxi, Here Technologies, Renault/Nissan and others. He also headed a department for high-tech partnerships at Mercedes-Benz, where he brought innovations to market readiness.
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