The growing Asia-Europe corporate connection  

For years Asian corporations looked to Silicon Valley for innovation ideas, setting up innovation scouting outposts in the Bay Area to make sure they kept abreast of the latest developments. Those corporate venture arms are still there and thriving with the CVC teams of companies like Samsung, Toyota, LG and TDK in some of the biggest startup funding rounds. In fact, these outposts have had an impact in shaping the Silicon Valley model itself, as outlined in the recent research by Robyn Klingler-Vidra and Ramon Pacheo Pardo.  

More recently we’ve seen a quiet but steady stream of Asian companies increasing their corporate venture presence in Europe. The latest of these was DIC Corporation, the Japanese chemicals company, which has created a new Zurich-based investment arm, DIC D2S Ventures AG.  

DIC is the latest in a series of Asian corporate venture teams deepening their engagement with Europe. Last month Honda Xcelerator Ventures expanded its presence into the UK, while in May South Korea’s LG Technology Ventures opened an office in London, its first time stationing dedicated investment staff outside of its Silicon Valley headquarters. Japanese trade body Jetro noted more than 60 Japanese organisations with technology scouting organisations in Europe in 2025. That number is likely growing.  

What are Asian investors looking for in Europe? Cynically you could say that the sky-high AI funding rounds are pricing most investors out of Silicon Valley right now. That may be a factor, but also, a combination of deep tech, industrial innovation and sustainability innovation is a draw.  

As Ikuro Kiyoto of DIC Corporation put it when asked about the company’s decision to base the fund in Switzerland, “Zurich has one of the strongest deep tech ecosystems globally, there is a strong concentration of robotics, AI industry, automation, and universities like ETH and startups and investors.” 

Japanese investors may be a good fit with deep tech innovation, as they are used to bringing long-horizon thinking and patient capital. In fact, their pace may be well matched with some of Europe’s family offices, which think about investments in generational terms, and which are still a very under-tapped source of capital for funding Europe’s frontier science and technology startups. There could be some interesting collaboration that could be brought together here.  

I’d be excited to pursue some of these ideas in discussions at the GCV Symposium in London next month, which has always been a very international gathering — and may be becoming even more so.  If you are not already signed up to join us, drop me a line (whispers: I might even be able to get you a discount code).

This editor’s note was first published in GCV’s Blueprint newsletter, which tracks corporate venture news, key deals, new funds best practice and jobs.

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