Aster, formerly Aster Capital, is a Paris-headquartered venture capital firm with a second office in Bordeaux. Its lineage begins with Schneider Electric Ventures in 2000; in 2010 it was spun out as an independent manager backed jointly by Schneider Electric and Alstom, later joined by Rhodia and the European Investment Fund. Today it positions itself around transforming hard-to-abate industries, investing from seed to Series B with cheques of 500,000 to 5 million euros across energy, mobility, logistics, manufacturing, construction, chemicals and agriculture. Aster describes itself as an ecosystem VC, pairing capital with a corporate team and a scale team that connect founders to industrial partners and specialists. It reported more than 500 million euros under management when it closed a 240 million euro fund in November 2017, and in 2023 it took over minority stakes in around twenty companies from TotalEnergies Ventures. Portfolio companies include Sunfire, tado, Neural Concept, Iceotope, Eficia, Karos, Heetch and LevelTen Energy.
Investment thesis
Aster invests in European deep tech, industrial and climate companies working on the decarbonisation of hard-to-abate industries. It writes cheques of 500,000 to 5 million euros from seed to Series B across energy, mobility, logistics, manufacturing, construction, chemicals and agriculture. Beyond capital it acts as an ecosystem investor, using dedicated corporate and scale teams to connect founders with industrial groups and experts and shorten the path to industrialisation.
Past investments
| Company | Round | Date | Round size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warehousing1 Berlin, Germany | Series A | Apr 2022 | €10M |
| Neural Concept Lausanne, Switzerland | Series A | Mar 2022 | €8.3M |
| 2trde Munich, Germany | Seed | Mar 2022 | €7M |
| Eficia Paris, France | - | Jan 2016 | €2.3M |
| Iceotope Sheffield, United Kingdom | Series A | Jan 2014 | €7.4M |