Matthew Raeside, Director of IB principal investments at UBS, is one of our top 50 Rising Stars in corporate venturing for 2025.
Matthew Raeside was a Royal Navy officer, controlling fighter aircraft on Type 45 Destroyers before joining UBS through the Swiss investment bank’s ex-forces recruitment scheme.
“I remember my first day on the trading floor and I looked around and said, ‘it is exactly the same’. People sitting behind banks of screens, all with headsets on, taking in information, taking actions and passing it on.”
Raeside fell in love with venture investing during a rotation on the bank’s Principal Investments desk. The variety of the work was a key draw. “What I like most about the day to day is the level of problem solving required. Every situation that presents itself is unique in some aspect,” he says. “There is no day I have had since starting that has been the same,” he says.
The UBS strategic investments team is made up of eight people, half of whom work on investments, while the other half works more directly with the portfolio startups on implementation. The team’s investments are strategic and focused on areas that can enhance UBS’s capabilities, mainly fintech and market infrastructure, with some focus on emerging themes such as sustainability, digital assets and AI.
“What I like most about the day to day is the level of problem solving required. Every situation that presents itself is unique in some aspect.”
One company that Raeside has personally been deeply involved with is Carbonplace, a portfolio management and settlement platform for the voluntary carbon markets. UBS’s investment team, alongside eight other banks, helped build the company from initial idea to an established business with more than 30 employees. Raeside now sits on the board.
Balancing the needs of small nimble startups and the large corporate structure of UBS is one of the biggest challenges, he says.
“You have young companies that are very dynamic, but you are working in a much larger organisation with controls, policies and procedures. Achieving a balance between those and being able to operate in both of those worlds is the unique corporate venturing skill.”
See the full list of Rising Stars 2025 here.
