A new business risk business called Leptmov It has been found in a quiet blitz for the last 16 months, funding about 20 newly established companies that are generally focused on repair. Its portfolio includes EV companies, spaces and batteries and four new fusion companies. But the business has only said that its funding is from “European industrial interests”.
Now, Leitmotif told TechCrunch where the money came from: the Volkswagen Group.
The German automotive giant has committed $ 300 million in Leitmotif’s first fund and is his only limited partner. Leitmotif has developed about one -third of its so far. During a conference on Tuesday, Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume said Leitmotif’s investment could help reduce carbon footprint and develop a “circular economy inside and out” the company.
“Volkswagen’s culture is a group culture,” he said.
Leitmotif wants to go even further, according to young managers of the young business Matt Trevithick and Jens Wiese. They hope to return successive funds that draw more European industrial interests than Volkswagen.
It is an ambitious effort. Ensuring funding for newly established businesses, especially those with a serious production element, has been harsh in recent years. But Trevithick believes it is the right time to try to invest in such companies.
“Technology has always been a guide to human progress and I think the United States is going to be overloaded,” he told TechCrunch. “I think in the coming years they are going to produce some technical possibilities in the United States that the rest of the world will admire.”
Leitmotif also creates a transmitter fund, while the geopolitical environment is directed by Trump’s administration.
Despite this turmoil, Wiese – who was the head of Volkswagen Group’s M&A, M&A, Counseling and Corporate Relationship before Leitmotif started – said the new business’s primary goal is to “create a bridge between the European industrial facility and the US.”
Priority one: Earn money
Trevithick and Wiese said Volkswagen had a top priority when it agreed to invest in the fund: Make money.
“First of all, this is the creation of a successful business business,” Wiese said.
While the Volkswagen group is beating hundreds of billions of dollars a year in revenue, Wiese said that money production is still significant because it is “how the industry maintains the score”.
After that, VC said it plans to invest in “class of class in our areas of interest”, according to Wiese, and also to locate “new pockets of innovation” that could benefit the Volkswagen team.
Wiese said he was expecting about a quarter of Leitmotif’s portfolio over time to interact with Volkswagen and myriad chips.
EV truck starts is an example. Harbinger’s $ 100 million dollars of Harbinger of Harbinger in January and Wiese said that the start had discussions about collaborating with the Volkswagen truck section.
Geographically, Leitmotif’s investment strategy is structured so that about 70% of its capital will grow in the US, with the other 30% invested in the EU. The company will maintain offices in both Palo Alto and Munich.
Trevithick said 70% of Leitmotif’s global investment in this first fund will take place in newly established companies that “solve today’s known problems” and there are “billions of dollars-plus purchases with customers ready to buy innovation”.
The other 30% of the fund will focus on what is called “revolutionary innovation” that will create “billions of dollars in the 2030s onwards”.
So far, this strategy has led to investment in Redwood Materials Battery Recycling Company, reusable Stoke Space rocket company and even a circular polyester. Leitmotif has publicly supported 13 newly established companies to date, although there are more in its non -announced portfolio.
Leitmotif will eventually have other funds. Trevithick and Wiese said they were particularly watching Robotics and AI Next. Volkswagen will have the right to invest in them if she chooses, but Leitmotif is independent and, for the time being, focuses on completing the first fund.
The timetable is everything
The late 2023 was undoubtedly the worst time for newly formed businesses in recent memory to lock large rounds of funding, especially those focused on material or “Deep Tech”, thanks to high interest rates.
Trevithick said he made a great time to start Leitmotif.
“They are in the lower markets when strong companies are separated from the weak. In a bubble, everyone is funded,” he said.
This deceleration of the concentration of capital has caused other businesses to take less risks other than the newly established businesses that had already invested, Trevithick said.
“There were fewer new dollars to fund good companies that were there because everyone got myopic for their own portfolio,” he said. “I think this is why we have a very incoming interest in joining rounds that, at the time of the bubbles, maybe we wouldn’t have access.”
This interest came to a large extent thanks to the backgrounds of Wiese and Trevithick.
Wiese spent almost eight years at the Volkswagen Group, where he ran mergers, acquisitions and investments for the German automaker. During this stint at Volkswagen, Wiese developed what he called “quite a deep network in the business community, both in Europe and the US” that included forging a relationship with the Quantumscape battery manufacturer, where Wiese was a member of the Board of Directors by 2024.
Trevithick, meanwhile, was a partner at Venrock for a decade. There, he focused on making green energy investments during initial pure technology in early 2010, with his highest profile being an early Atieva battery manufacturer-the company that eventually became Lucid Motors.
Investing, advice and guiding companies through the subsequent pure technology bust were a valuable experience for navigation in the uncertainty that is plaguing the industry today, Trevithick said.
While many “pure zero” corporate targets are either offset or abandoned, Trevithick said the pure technology industry “is starting in a much better position this time”.
In addition, Trevithick said he believes that the unpredictable will present more opportunities for businesses such as Leitmotif – and the newly established returning companies.
“I think we can all agree that it is simply to be an extremely volatile environment. They should disproportionately favor businessmen, newly established and business capitalists,” he said.
“We feel very confident about our portfolio,” Wiese added. “Yes, [decarbonization] It is our primary issue. At the same time, we are investing in companies where we are convinced that they have the business case to succeed no matter what, say, the issue of the day is. ”
This story has been informed by comments by CEO of the Volkswagen Oliver Blume team.
