2000
Emerald was founded as the venture capital arm of Sustainable Asset Management (SAM), creator of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, with a presence in Europe and North America. We launched our first sustainability fund with €100 million assets under management.
2007
After separating from SAM, we rebranded as Emerald Technology Ventures. Venture money started pouring into cleantech investments, and we maintained our focus on sustainable industrial technologies with proven market demand.
2008-9
The financial crisis severely impacted the VC market. With a solid track record of minimizing risk and ensuring co-investment with dedicated partners, we weathered the storm.
2014
We won a mandate from the Swiss government to manage its Technology Fund, which has grown into a CHF 350 million debt guarantee program for cleantech-related SMEs. The Fund now serves as a model for governments around the world looking to foster a homegrown cleantech innovation ecosystem.
2016
In a universe of exclusively fixed-term VC funds, we launched the first flex-term (“evergreen”) fund, responding to interest from partners in maintaining open-ended relationships rather than terminating them at arbitrary deadlines.
2018
We won our first mandate to manage an external corporate VC organization, with Nabtesco Technology Ventures.
2020
We established our first Asia office in Singapore and launched our dedicated water fund, focusing on alleviating growing stress in managing the world’s most valuable resource. The next few years would see a series of specialist funds emerge focused exclusively on specific challenges in industrial sustainability.
2021
We launched a dedicated energy fund, capitalizing on the
$4 trillion that the world needs to invest in energy-sector decarbonization every year to 2030 in order to reach net-zero emissions by midcentury.
2022
We launched our dedicated packaging fund, taking aim at a significant source of waste and capitalizing on the growing demand to replace plastic in the environment.
2023
We won two mandates to manage external corporate VC organizations – Sasol Ventures and SIG InnoVentures.
