Crispin Leick has more than 15 years of experience in CVC and is the managing director of EnBW New Ventures (ENV), the $110m corporate venturing unit set up by Germany-headquartered infrastructure utility EnBW in 2016.
ENV is the second major fund Leick has helped to launch, having first raised $100m for RWE Innogy Venture Capital in early 2008 for Germany-based energy firm RWE’s renewable energy subsidiary RWE Innogy. ENV invests in innovative, fast-growing companies which are driving energy, mobility and urban transformation through scalable business models.
Leick says: “Our aim is to act as an open innovation platform to support entrepreneurs in their endeavour to create game-changing companies.”
“Our aim is to act as an open innovation platform to support entrepreneurs in their endeavour to create game-changing companies.”
The unit typically acts as the lead or co-investor on deals ranging in size from €1m to €10m.
Among ENV’s recent investments are participation in the $8.5m venture round for Vivacity Labs, the transport technology scaleup transforming cities into smarter and more efficient places to live and work, and a lead role in the €10m series B round for Deepomatic, a visual automation platform that allows companies to enrich reporting and automate the quality control of their operations.
ENV also led on the €4m series A round for cloud communications platform babelforce. Other portfolio companies include Easelink, a developer of automated electric vehicle charging technology, and Holo-Light, a business driving augmented reality applications enabling the industrial metaverse. ENV had three exits in the past 24 months: Replex was bought by Cisco, Lumenaza was bought by financial investors, and DZ4 was entirely taken over by the EnBW corporate.