Promoting startups, Trumpf establishes a venture capital company
Laser and machine tool maker Trumpf (Ditzingen, Germany) has founded a venture capital company for funding technology startups that want to play a major role in shaping the future of industry. The company announced that Trumpf Venture began operations in July and has the goal of building an investment portfolio over the next five years of approximately 40 million euros.
"Once we get into our stride, we plan to participate in around five startups per year," said Christof Siebert, Head of Technology Management at Trumpf. "As a strategic investor, we want to use our network, our industrial production expertise, and our technological know-how to assist startups with market launch and successful growth,”
Trumpf is especially interested here in the fields of photonics and digitally connected production as well as in new manufacturing processes, smart components, and high-tech materials. "We’re already having discussions with our first startups, and assuming that we’ll be able to make investments relatively soon. As a partner of the forthcoming CODE_n new.New Festival in Karlsruhe, we’ll soon be making contact with further interesting startups," Siebert added.
The Trumpf Venture is an extension of the company’s comprehensive activities to promote innovation and to detect disruptive technologies at an early stage. In addition to the company’s R&D departments and the M&A department, this includes comprehensive technology scouting in the central R&D department as well as close links with relevant technological centers of excellence worldwide. These measures are enabling long-term and sustainable assessment of trends, and early entry into suitable high-technology fields.
In 2014, Trumpf also founded its own bank, with a view to providing industry-specific finance and appealing primarily to customers in the manufacturing technology sector.
Information on Trumpf Venture can be found at www.trumpf.com/venture
Conard Holton | Editor at Large
Conard Holton has 25 years of science and technology editing and writing experience. He was formerly a staff member and consultant for government agencies such as the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the International Atomic Energy Agency, and engineering companies such as Bechtel. He joined Laser Focus World in 1997 as senior editor, becoming editor in chief of WDM Solutions, which he founded in 1999. In 2003 he joined Vision Systems Design as editor in chief, while continuing as contributing editor at Laser Focus World. Conard became editor in chief of Laser Focus World in August 2011, a role in which he served through August 2018. He then served as Editor at Large for Laser Focus World and Co-Chair of the Lasers & Photonics Marketplace Seminar from August 2018 through January 2022. He received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, with additional studies at the Colorado School of Mines and Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.