Climentum Capital Closes €60M First Close on Fund II

Climentum Capital has raised €60 million at first close for its second climate hard-tech fund, Climentum Capital Fund II, the Copenhagen-based venture firm announced this week. The vehicle targets up to €100 million to back around 20 early-stage hardware and deep-tech companies across the Nordics and Germany. The first close matches the entire size of the firm’s 2022-vintage Fund I. That is the real result.

Public and semi-public capital wrote the bulk of the cheques. The European Investment Fund committed €40 million through its RCR-REPowerEU mandate, Denmark’s Export and Investment Fund (EIFO) added €15 million, and the Danish Society of Engineers (IDA), a trade union representing more than 180,000 engineers, scientists and IT professionals, made its first-ever venture capital commitment at €5 million. That last line is the unusual one: a trade union taking a cap-table seat in a climate hard-tech fund is rare enough on its own. It also reshapes the kind of LP base European climate hardware will have to lean on for the rest of the decade. Halborg put the framing plainly in the announcement: “The fundraising environment for early-stage climate hard tech has not been easy in recent years. Investors are more selective, timelines are longer, and the proof bar is higher.”

The three LPs that closed the €60 million

Climentum Capital Fund II’s first close rests on three limited partners, not a long roster. The European Investment Fund, the EU’s venture and growth arm within the European Investment Bank Group, committed €40 million and anchors the round. Denmark’s Export and Investment Fund (EIFO) committed €15 million, and the Danish Society of Engineers (IDA), a trade union and professional body for STEM workers, committed €5 million.

The mandates behind those three commitments are the more revealing part:

Two of the three LPs are public financial institutions, and the EIF commitment runs through the EU vehicle built to cut fossil-fuel dependence and back clean-energy technologies. EIFO frames its role as accelerating the green transition while strengthening Europe’s strategic independence, a positioning the bank has made a centerpiece of its venture activity across 100-plus countries. IDA’s €5 million sits outside both mandates and is the closest thing in the release to a structural novelty.

Why a trade union took a seat at the cap table

Trade unions almost never invest in venture capital funds. A commitment of any size from a labour organisation into a Seed and Series A hard-tech vehicle is rare enough to be worth a sentence on its own. IDA frames the move as a response to the experience of its members: many of them are the engineers the climate hard-tech sector is trying to hire. The union says access to capital remains one of the biggest barriers facing the entrepreneurs its members work alongside.

For IDA, the investment also doubles as a positioning move inside the broader Danish and European climate conversation. The union argues Europe needs more competitive technology companies and that Denmark has the research base and engineering talent to build them. Taking a fund stake is IDA’s way of supporting that pipeline directly, without waiting on the public purse to do the work alone.

The €5 million is small in fund terms and large in category terms: it is the first venture capital commitment IDA has ever made, according to the announcement. Laura Klitgaard, IDA’s president, framed the move in blunt terms:

It is unusual for a trade union to become an investor, but I hope IDA can lead by example and inspire others to follow.

Klitgaard’s wider statement put the rationale the same way: “We cannot keep talking. We need to turn words into action.” The €5 million sits small next to the public LPs, but it is the first of its kind, and IDA is publicly asking other unions to consider the same move.

Public capital is doing the heavy lifting

Behind the headline number sits an uncomfortable subtext for European climate hard tech. Two public institutions and a trade union have written the cheques, which means the private LP base for early-stage climate hardware in Europe is doing less of the work than the deal terms might suggest. The €60 million first close still counts as a real result inside a difficult fundraising vintage, but the LP composition is the part investors and founders will read most carefully. That composition is the angle that matters.

European climate tech fundraising has slowed, and hardware-heavy strategies have been hit hardest by higher rates, a sluggish exit market and a wall of capital pulled toward artificial intelligence. A first close of €60 million against a target of up to €100 million is a respectable result inside that backdrop. It is also a useful snapshot of where the European market sits in the middle of 2026: public and semi-public capital is filling the gap private LPs have stepped away from, at the earliest stages of the stack.

Merete Clausen, the EIF’s deputy chief executive, framed the same dynamic from the public side. “Europe has excellent research and business ideas,” she said. “To build on these, it needs investors willing to back companies developing the industrial technologies that will shape the next generation of clean growth.” The framing is the EU’s standard one, and it is also why Climentum’s mandate reads the way it does. And the framing explains why the EIF’s money sits where it does.

Closing the fund at its up-to-€100-million target is the next test for the strategy. If private LPs do not follow the public anchor into the final close, the round will be read as confirmation that European climate hardware has settled into a state-supported category for the medium term. The first close has already tilted in that direction.

What Fund I proved, and how Fund II builds on it

Climentum’s first fund launched in 2022 at €60 million, the same size as Fund II’s first close. That fund has already produced a realised exit, with Studsvik acquiring KNXT less than three years after the initial investment. The firm made 17 investments across seven European countries, and the KNXT deal is the one it uses to demonstrate its thesis in action. Both names matter.

The exit was KNXT, acquired by Studsvik, the Swedish nuclear services company. Climentum framed the deal as a confirmation of its industrial thesis: a strategic industrial buyer, not a financial sponsor, paying for capabilities it needed to remain competitive. The portfolio also includes Qvantum, a Swedish maker of urban heat pumps and thermal mini-grids that Climentum highlights as one of the better-known names from Fund I, and the pattern across the realised exit and the current portfolio is the same: hardware deployed into heavy industry with a quantifiable emissions angle.

Fund II keeps the same discipline. The plan is to make around 20 investments, lead Seed and Series A rounds, and write €1 million to €5 million initial cheques. Teams are based across the Nordics and DACH, and the firm says that footprint lets it source deals locally and support founders after the cheque clears. It is a tighter version of the Fund I playbook, with a bigger pool behind it, and a $26 million Series A for autonomous industrial control software at Gigaton illustrates the kind of industrial-software bet the new capital can underwrite.

Where the new €60 million will actually land

The deployment plan is specific. Climentum Capital Fund II will lead Seed and Series A rounds in B2B hard-tech companies building hardware and deep-tech solutions across four sectors, with the geographic focus drawn from the Nordics and DACH. The firm’s strategic frames for the work are more revealing than the sectors alone:

• Energy security: reducing Europe’s dependence on imported fossil fuels, the same framing the EIF’s REPowerEU mandate uses
• Industrial efficiency: hardware that cuts energy use inside heavy industry, the hardest-to-abate processes
• Supply chain sovereignty: technologies that anchor European manufacturing capability and reduce external dependencies
• Industrial decarbonisation: deep emissions cuts in the highest-emitting processes, the firm’s own primary mandate

The geography matches the firm’s own footprint: Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Austria and Switzerland are the named markets. Initial cheques will sit between €1 million and €5 million, the firm is targeting around a 10% ownership stake at entry, and roughly half the fund is reserved for follow-on rounds, a structural feature of climate hardware investing that the headline number alone does not capture. Climentum’s own portfolio breakdown lays out the deployment rules the firm has used since 2022.

The decarbonization pitch, retitled as industrial resilience

Climentum is selling the same portfolio under two labels, and the second label is the one European institutions will fund through any cycle. Fund II is structured as an Article 9 fund under the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, the strictest sustainability category, and uses a dual carry model that ties part of the firm’s economics to verified CO₂ savings, alongside financial returns. The fund targets portfolio-wide abatement of about 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year at scale, equivalent to the emissions from 350 000 gasoline-powered cars driven for one year, by the firm’s own framing, and both numbers matter.

The pitch has been deliberately repositioned since Fund I. Climentum now talks less about pure climate impact and more about industrial resilience, supply chain sovereignty and the strategic independence of European heavy industry. The shift tracks where European policy money and political will have moved since 2022: energy security, the resilience of European manufacturing, and the need to fund physical technologies that cannot be offshored as easily as software. Erik Balck Sørensen, EIFO’s chief investment officer, made the framing explicit in the announcement: “EIFO’s mission is to accelerate the green transition while strengthening Europe’s strategic independence.” The dual language is doing the work of two audiences at once, and it is the reason a €40 million EIF pledge to Climentum Fund II is the kind of capital that anchors a round in 2026.

The fund’s name signals the shift in framing. Fund I launched under a softer positioning, while Fund II is being sold as ‘backing hard tech for a new Europe’, a line that ties climate impact to industrial backbone. The dual carry model then walks the talk: part of the firm’s carry is conditional on the portfolio’s verified emissions savings, with the rest tied to financial returns, an audit-friendly posture that becomes an advantage at later fundraising rounds.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Climentum Capital Fund II?

Climentum Capital Fund II is the second climate hard-tech venture fund from Copenhagen-based Danish VC Climentum Capital, founded in 2022. It targets up to €100 million in size, reached a €60 million first close in July 2026, and will lead Seed and Series A rounds in European B2B hardware and deep-tech companies across energy, industry, transport and agriculture in the Nordics and DACH region: Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

How is the LP base structured?

Three limited partners closed the first €60 million. The European Investment Fund committed €40 million through the RCR-REPowerEU mandate, which advances the EU climate-neutral 2050 target. Denmark’s EIFO committed €15 million, and the Danish Society of Engineers (IDA) committed €5 million as its first venture capital investment. Two of the three LPs are public financial institutions.

Why is IDA’s €5 million commitment significant?

Trade unions rarely take positions in venture capital funds, and IDA’s €5 million is described in the announcement as a first. The Danish Society of Engineers represents more than 180,000 engineers, scientists and IT professionals, the same talent pool the climate hard-tech sector is competing to hire. IDA framed the move as a way to back the technology pipeline its members will work in, with the financial return a secondary consideration.

What has Fund I delivered so far?

Fund I launched in 2022 at €60 million and made 17 investments across seven European countries. The portfolio includes Qvantum, a Swedish maker of urban heat pumps and thermal mini-grids, alongside the KNXT business that Studsvik acquired less than three years after Climentum’s initial investment. The KNXT deal is the realised exit the firm highlights to demonstrate its thesis in action, and Qvantum is one of the better-known names from the portfolio.

How does the dual carry model work for founders?

Climentum Capital Fund II is structured as an SFDR Article 9 fund, the EU’s strictest sustainability category, and links part of its carried interest to verified CO₂ savings, with the rest tied to financial returns. For founders, this means the firm’s incentive structure is tied to measurable emissions cuts, with financial returns determining the rest of the carry pool. Founders whose decarbonisation case holds up in audit should find the structure works in their favour at later fundraising rounds.