Icos Capital announces first closing of its fourth consecutive pure play Climate Tech venture capital fund, Icos Capital Growth Fund IV (Icos IV). Commitments to Icos IV include strong support from cornerstone investors in prior Icos funds as well as several new corporate, financial and public sector investors. The fund has a targeted size of €100 M with €150 M hard cap. Icos IV will support Climate Tech innovations to scale and promote decarbonization of large industries in sustainable food systems, industry digitization, carbon technology and sustainable chemicals & materials.
Since 2005, Icos has consistently seen both the opportunity and urgency to invest in innovation that underpins the global drive towards sustainability. In recent years, the importance of scalable Climate Tech propositions has become even more prominent with strengthening ambitions, and also driven by regulatory obligations, to transition to Net Zero and circular economies. Seeing this opportunity, Icos IV aims to accelerate this wave of innovation and provide a purpose-built ecosystem to further support the success of its investee companies. Icos IV will invest across a range of targeted market sectors that it has get to know extremely well over the years, including green economy sectors, circular economy sectors and promising ocean-based blue economy sectors.
The Icos strategy has proven successful with investments in market leaders including (among others): Carbon Clean (UK), a leading point source carbon capture solutions provider capturing almost 1.9Mt of CO2 from industrial sites around the world with an ambition to remove 1 bn. tons of CO2 (about 2% of global CO2 emissions) by the mid-2030s; Holiferm (UK), offering an alternative to traditional surfactants by producing bio-surfactants for use as ingredients in personal care and home care products, with a ktonne commercial scale plant; InnovoPro (IL), bringing chickpea protein ingredients to the global market for nutritious, tasty, safe and sustainable food products; eAgronom (EE), revolutionising regenerative agriculture with intelligent farm management systems and already involved in removing 300,000 tonnes CO2 from the atmosphere annually; and NapiFeryn BioTech (PL), extracting high quality proteins with excellent formulation characteristics from the sidestream of rapeseed oil pressing, and with great taste and price-competitiveness. In addition,Icos has a proven track record in supporting the scaling of companies in the Netherlands, especially in the Dutch Foodvalley ecosystem, including BioActor, WholeFiber, NutriLeads and NoPalm Ingredients.
“The fourth Icos fund continues our proven strategy, targeting Climate Tech winners in hot market segments within decarbonization, food tech, sustainable chemicals & materials, and industry digitization. The fund focuses on decarbonizing industries that account for about 30% of total global emissions. Icos IV is launched as an SFDR Article 9 Fund, noting the highest level of sustainable investment. Since its inception, Icos has had a dedicated strong focus on GHG reduction and maintains ambitious and concrete carbon targets with cost efficient innovative solutions.” – Peter van Gelderen, Founding Partner at Icos Capital.
Icos Capital Fund IV benefits from enormous value creation by the Icos Collaborative Venturing Platform (CVP). The CVP is a purpose-built ecosystem that catalyzes meaningful engagement between a group of innovation focused corporations and fast growth innovators. CVP members include several leading corporations as well as ICOS IV cornerstone investors Nouryon and Bühler Group.
“Decarbonising to Net Zero is an urgent and complex challenge. By bringing fast growth innovators together with sector leading corporations in our Collaborative Venturing Platform, we are able to facilitate growth financing, engineering and production expertise, infrastructure and market access. We’re looking forward to continuing this proven model in Icos IV.” – Nityen Lal, Founding Partner at Icos Capital.
Ian Roberts, CTO at Bühler Group, Switzerland: “Our ambitious sustainability and innovation agenda at Bühler is certainly complemented by the work of the Icos team. The Collaborative Venturing Platform has helped us come closer to new innovation and helped us engage with the next generation of top innovations in Agrifood & Food tech market in real business cases”.
Phil Clark, CTO at Nouryon, USA: “As a member of the Collaborative Venturing Platform, we aim to source and partner with the next generation of sustainable chemicals and decarbonization technologies. Icos Capital has proven themselves in sourcing, monitoring and collaborating with leading edge innovations and it supports our strategy of developing more sustainable chemical platforms for our customers.”
Freek Welling, Director Capital a.i. at Oost NL, The Netherlands: “Our investment in Icos IV emphasizes our joint commitment to sustainable innovation in food & agriculture, decarbonization and sustainable chemicals & materials. Icos made a conscious decision to find an investment partner in our region. Together with our important partners in Gelderland, the Wageningen University & Research, Foodvalley, and Icos partners we can add value to innovative earlystage growth companies.” Oost NL invests from their Participatiefonds and Perspectieffonds Gelderland, a fund of the province of Gelderland.
