Exclusive: Eurazeo to launch €500m ‘future industries’ venture fund

Eurazeo, one of Europe’s largest investment groups, is preparing to launch a new €500m clean tech vehicle, Impact Loop has learned.

The so-called “future industries fund” is expected to open formal fundraising in the coming weeks, according to Alice Besomi, managing director for industrial climate tech at the firm. A first close of around €180–200 million is expected by around July.

The Article 8 vehicle follows on from Eurazeo’s second smart city fund, which closed at €400m in 2023, but drops the “smart city” label in favour of a broader industrial branding.

“This is a new fund with a new mandate,” Besomi told Impact Loop from the sidelines of the GoWest conference in Gothenburg this week. “We’re focused on backing companies that make industries more resilient, more sovereign, and more sustainable. That’s the core of the strategy.”

The existing LP base in Eurazeo’s climate platform is entirely European, with around 40–50% of capital coming from Asia, spanning corporates, family offices, sovereign funds and development finance institutions. For the new fund, the firm is also actively courting North American investors, said Besomi.

A lot of the most important climate companies won’t ever be unicorns

The Future Industries Fund will sit between late-stage venture and early growth, aiming at a part of the climate market that many investors now see as structurally undercapitalised.

Ticket sizes are expected to range from €10m to €30m per company, including follow-ons.

Where the new fund will invest

Unlike Eurazeo’s generalist venture and growth funds, which lean heavily into software, AI and fintech, the new vehicle will be explicitly oriented toward the physical layer of the climate transition.

Priority sectors include energy systems, the built environment, industrial infrastructure, transport and mobility, supply chains and critical resources, says Besomi. Urban technologies remain in scope, but as part of a wider industrial system rather than a standalone “smart city” theme.

Although no capital has yet been deployed from the new fund, its thesis closely mirrors the investments Eurazeo has been making under its existing climate and urban-tech strategy.

Recent deals include a €20m Series B investment into Aedifion, a German SaaS company focused on energy performance in buildings and a growth investment into GA Smart Building, a French off-site construction group developing low-carbon building systems.

“We’re not trying to run a classic power-law VC strategy here,” Besomi said. “A lot of the most important climate companies won’t ever be unicorns. They’ll look like very solid industrial businesses with predictable cash flows and realistic exits.”

That thinking shapes how the fund is being constructed.

The exit strategy

Eurazeo is building the strategy around industrial M&A and secondary private equity buyouts as the primary exit routes in Europe, rather than IPOs.

Typical holding periods are expected to run four to six years. Entry valuations are meant to reflect plausible exit multiples, and the team is open to structured rounds, tranching and milestone-based pricing to align capital deployment more closely with operational progress.

Asia is treated differently, with China and India viewed as markets where faster IPO timelines and higher exit velocity may still be realistic.

Eurazeo embraces resilience

Resilience is the organising concept of the new fund.

In practice, Besomi says that means backing system-level solutions that reduce single points of failure and strengthen regional self-sufficiency. Food sovereignty, distributed energy, low-carbon construction and decentralised mobility infrastructure all sit inside that definition.

The timing of the launch comes amid a broader reset in climate tech finance.

Venture funding for climate tech funding peaked in 2021 and has fallen sharply since, exposing the weakness of applying software-style investing to asset-heavy industrial models.

“The market is being forced into something more realistic,” Besomi said. “Less about paper mark-ups, more about industrial economics and real exits.”

If Eurazeo gets anywhere near its €500m target, the Future Industries Fund would rank among the largest Europe-based venture vehicles focused on the physical backbone of the energy transition.