Alexander Helmke, managing director of T.Capital, is one of the 100 leading corporate venturing professionals in our 2024 Powerlist.
Alexander Helmke is managing director of T.Capital, the corporate venture capital arm of telecoms carrier Deutsche Telekom. Founded in 2015, the unit has invested in more than 40 companies spanning across Europe, North America and Israel. He helped spearhead the unit in recent years, while expanding its team.
T.Capital assists its corporate parent Deutsche Telekom in acquiring both minority and majority participation stakes in technologies with strategic potential, seeking to generate both strategic and financial value. It focuses on both early and late-stage investments in companies with potential synergies with its corporate parent.
T.Capital assists its corporate parent Deutsche Telekom in acquiring
both minority and majority participation stakes in technologies with strategic potential.
The unit recently backed the $64m series B round raised by environmental service provider Pachama, alongside the Amazon Climate Pledge Fund and other investors. Pachama runs an integrated marketplace for nature-based carbon credits and its platform employs satellite data and AI to monitor carbon capture by forests and help conservation and reforestation. The unit is also an investor in e-Sim company Airalo.
Helmke leads a group of 12 at T.Capital, which is split into an investment team of seven and a platform team of five. The former is in charge of seeking investments, while the latter facilitates further relationship between the corporate parent and portfolio companies.
Previously, Helmke spent more than 15 years at cloud software company VMware, where he had initially created partner programmes to expand the company’s strategic ecosystem. He subsequently became a founding member of its corporate development and strategy team, overseeing multiple investments and acquisitions. At the time, Helmke also assumed various board member and board observer roles for several of VMware’s portfolio companies.
Prior to VMware, Helmke worked as a field application engineer at software company Wind River, where he spent nearly a decade.
