When innovation meets capital and customers

Powerful research is beginning to emerge from Copenhagen Business School under Professor Francesco Di Lorenzo and doctoral researcher Finn Kühl on when and how corporates should combine venture capital with venture clienting. It builds on more than a decade of work by Tobias Gutmann at Germany’s European Business School exploring the relationship between the two models. 

The crucial understanding is intention. 

Corporate venture capital often comes first because the technology or business model is still evolving. Strategic investment allows a corporate to gain early access, learn alongside the startup and help shape its development. Once the technology has matured, larger capital commitments and commercial customer or supplier relationships can follow, reinforcing both the strategic rationale and the potential venture-style financial return. 

Three deals announced over the past week illustrate the power of combining corporate venture capital and venture clienting through long-term strategic planning. 

Germany-based Proxima Fusion raised €411m ($468m) at a €2.4bn valuation in a round led by XTX Ventures and East X Ventures, the CVC units of two eponymous trading firms. Strategic investors included Germany-based utility RWE and Google, part of US-listed Alphabet. The financing will support the construction of Alpha, Proxima’s net-energy stellarator demonstrator for nuclear fusion. “Europe is racing with the United States and China to build the first fusion power plant,” said Francesco Sciortino, co-founder and chief executive of Proxima Fusion. 

The recent conflict between the US and Iran, and the temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz, served as another reminder that energy has become a strategic technology underpinning national security, economic resilience and industrial competitiveness. 

Clara Andreoletti, chief executive of Eni Next, the corporate venture unit of Italy-based energy group Eni, has also seen the original investment thesis behind lithium battery technology developer Energy Exploration Technologies (EnergyX) begin to bear fruit with a working partnership between the two companies. 

Eni announced a $225m investment in EnergyX’s Project Black Giant, a lithium mine development in Antofagasta, Chile. Beyond the capital commitment, Eni will secure rights to approximately 25% of future lithium production from the project, becoming a venture client as well as an investor. 

As CTVC observed in its latest report: “One of the most meaningful forms of partnership is offtake. Your project or product is only real if someone wants to buy it at the price you’re selling it. Firm offtake commitments are the gold standard for whether a technology is de-risked and a project is bankable, unlocking later-stage financing like project finance and debt. And it’s not just funding, but also feedback, test runs and credibility in the market to bring in additional customers.” 

Eni’s latest investment builds on Eni Next’s participation in EnergyX’s $50m series B round in December 2022. Andreoletti said, “Eni Next has been a shareholder of EnergyX for nearly four years now, since the early days of exploration. This larger investment by our corporate parent demonstrates successful portfolio incubation and deal origination by the corporate venture capital arm.” 

The period between an initial CVC investment and a meaningful commercial partnership is often the hardest to navigate. When Eni Next first invested, EnergyX had yet to acquire more than 100,000 acres of mining concessions in northern Chile and was still developing patents for its proprietary GET Lit direct lithium extraction and refining platform. 

Reaching this stage has required navigating technological, execution and commodity price risk, particularly given lithium’s recent price volatility. Long-term strategic commitment, supported by milestone-based investment, makes it possible to manage those risks through a staged approach. 

Eni is targeting carbon neutrality by 2050 and has spent more than a decade investing in carbon capture and storage, fusion energy, supercomputing and, more recently, quantum computing. 

The same strategic pressures are shaping investment decisions across the energy sector. Quaise Energy, a US-based developer of superhot geothermal technology, completed the first close of its series B round, raising $134m, including strategic investments from JERA and Idemitsu, two of Japan’s largest energy companies. 

The proceeds will fund Project Obsidian, a geothermal power plant, alongside continued development and commercialisation of Quaise’s millimetre-wave drilling system. The company is simultaneously raising project-level equity and debt financing to deliver its first electricity to the grid by 2030, supported by commercial offtake agreements that have yet to be disclosed. 

The emerging research is increasingly validating what experienced corporate investors have learned through practice. Venture capital and venture clienting are not competing models but complementary ones. Used together, they provide a pathway from innovation to commercial adoption, reducing risk while creating strategic and financial value. 

When innovation is matched with patient capital and committed customers, remarkable things can happen. 

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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