Malin Carlstrom, a Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars 2019 award winner, has been promoted at ABB Technology Ventures (ATV), Switzerland-headquartered power and automation technology producer ABB’s strategic investment arm.
Carlstrom, formerly senior vice-president and head of investments for northern Europe at ABB Technology Ventures, is now head of ventures, ABB Electrification.
The move came as part of a restructuring and decentralisation drive, and Carlstrom said in her LinkedIn profile she would now be “investing in startups and scaleups that align with the ABB Electrification vision of ‘writing the future of safe, smart and sustainable electrification’”.
ABB’s other business units cover industrial automation, motion and robotics and discrete automation. Those divisions will cover corporate venturing from their own resources rather than the centralised ATV, which under Kurt Kaltenegger, Rene Cotting and Andreas Wenzel will continue to support portfolio companies, an insider said.
ATV had invested more than $200m in startups spanning a range of sectors including robotics, renewables, industrial internet of things, artificial intelligence/machine learning, cybersecurity, smart buildings, electric mobility and distributed energy technology.
Carlstrom holds board positions at several startups including Dugga Learning Assessment, Enervalis and Graphmatech, which was her first investment at the unit, in September 2018.
Apart from her investment duties, Carlstrom helped develop ABB’s innovation hub, SynerLeap, at its Corporate Research Centre in Sweden. Before joining ATV in 2017 she had been investing in the financial VC industry for 13 years in fintech, legal tech, edtech, marketplaces and mobile apps.
