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Leaders
May 2020 www.intellinews.com I Page 6
Infratech investment pioneer IPM tackles the big themes of the coming decades
IPM, an asset manager that has pioneered investment into the emerging infratech area
– the intersection between infrastructure
and technology – is planning to raise a $1bn investment fund, co-founder and managing partner Marian Bocek says in an interview with bne IntelliNews.
Taking the infratech concept and applying it to real deals, IPM “tried to merge the world of technology and the world of infrastructure, and focus on the venture-to-value build-up,” he explains. “I don’t know any other asset manager that is doing that under a single umbrella; the big guys tend to have an infrastructure fund and a tech fund ... we are industry leaders and first movers.”
IPM’s existing investors include South Korean institutional investors and large conglomerates such as Samsung. Among the major assets
in its portfolio are a 39% stake in Dunkerque LNG, one of Europe’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals, and the OCI Solar Energy Fund 1 targeted at solar projects in South Korea. However, over the last few years it has focussed increasingly on tech breakthrough companies in Silicon Valley and Europe.
So far, IPM has been investing in tech companies on an asset-specific basis. Two of its investments – R&D and battery production company InoBat and semiconductor startup Tachyum – are on their way to becoming billion dollar companies, according to Bocek, and the asset manager is now setting up its Avanea fund (the name combines ava meaning life and nea meaning novelty), to be launched towards the end of 2Q19.
The target size of the fund is $1bn, which means IPM would double its assets under management. “If you want to have an impact, the infrastructure element especially is pretty capital intensive,
so we are going for sizeable first fund,” says Bocek. “We believe this fund will be a global impact fund that really will invest in the key trends – electrification, AI, big data – to create a next generation of conglomerates and become a significant player in climate change discussions.”
Some of IPM’s existing investments like Energy Storage Systems (ESS), an environmentally friendly, utility-scale energy storage technology producer, are in the green energy space, while for others decarbonation is an important part of their impact: for example, InoBat’s batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and the Tachyum processor’s potential to significantly reduce energy consumption at data centres.
The next big things
It’s clear that the sectors picked for IPM’s tech investments are right at the centre of some of the biggest growth sectors of the coming decades: ESS in clean energy, InoBat in electro-mobility and Tachyum in big data.
With the next few years seen as critical for tackling climate change if global warming is
not to escalate out of control, governments are providing incentives for renewable energy and companies are investing around the world. ESS’s latest round of venture funding in 2019 was co- led by SB Energy, whose senior vice-president Rich Hossfeld commented at the time that “cost-effective long-duration energy storage ...