Aconterra, a focused ‘Smart Building Technology’ venture capital fund, has entered into a strategic partnership with Capricorn Digital Growth Fund managed by Capricorn Partners, an independent asset manager with more than 500M€ assets under management. The strategic partnership comes with a 10M€ capital increase by Aconterra Fund into Capricorn Digital Growth Fund.
With this mutually beneficial strategic partnership, both teams will work together on analysing and investing in the smart building tech market. The investment teams will scout for new investment opportunities in Europe and jointly analyse targets, strengthening both teams in their respective competency area. Investment decisions will be made independently by each team, depending on the size and scope of the target company.
Aconterra focuses primarily on European seed to early-stage companies that add value to buildings through increased energy efficiency and sustainability, safety, and comfort of working or living. The target company’s offering can be a combination of both software and hardware.
“With this strategic investment, Aconterra is expanding its reach in the smart building tech market. Not only can we build on more than 25 years of Capricorn expertise, the management teams have also proven to be extremely complementary. With their successful previous fund, the Capricorn ICT Arkiv Fund, the members of the Capricorn management team have shown their investment capacity in tech companies, and we look forward to collaborating with them”, says Ron Schuermans, founding partner of Aconterra.
Capricorn Digital Growth Fund focuses on early-stage growth companies leveraging deeptech innovation to get actionable insights for digitisation across multiple business and healthcare sectors.
In this interim closing, Capricorn Digital Growth Fund increases its capital to 66.5M€ and will continue its fundraising until the end of 2021.
Capricorn welcomes Aconterra as a strategic investor: “Capricorn sees many opportunities in leveraging the new generation of digital technologies such as AI, Digital Twin and IoT, to improve the way we build, manage and use residential, industrial, office and healthcare buildings. This focus fits the Capricorn investment strategy of turning data into actionable insights, as buildings are increasingly becoming a smart data source for improving the work and living conditions inside these buildings.”, states Katrin Geyskens, Partner in the Capricorn Digital Growth Fund. Capricorn portfolio companies can benefit from synergies stemming from the technological convergence between business, buildings and wellbeing (from safety, to comfort, to healthcare), as was the case in the previous digital fund in the Capricorn group.

Capricorn has already made a first portfolio investment in the Proptech area in Gradyent, a Dutch scale up applying Digital Twin and AI to optimise the management of district heating networks, a rapidly growing technique for leveraging heat sources to heat a multitude of buildings in the local area.

About Capricorn
Capricorn Partners is an independent manager of private and quoted equity funds that invest in minority shareholding positions of innovative companies with technology as a competitive advantage. Capricorn Digital Growth Fund invests in early-stage growth companies leveraging deeptech innovations to turn data into actionable insights, to enable business and healthcare. – www.capricorn.be/fund/capricorn-digital-growth-fund/

About Aconterra
Aconterra Fund is a focused ‘Smart Building Technology’ venture capital fund. It finances and supports European early stage companies that make buildings more intelligent and energy efficient, safer and better to live or work in. As an open-ended ‘evergreen’ fund, Aconterra aims for long term value and impact while creating an ecosystem for its investors and portfolio companies. Aconterra Fund is based in Antwerp, Belgium and managed by Aconterra Capital Partners, an independent Alternative Investment Fund Manager (AIFM) registered with the FSMA – www.aconterra.com