SE Ventures Research
Investment Thesis
SE Ventures is the corporate venture fund of Schneider Electric, structured and incentivized like a traditional venture capital firm. It backs founders in climate tech, sustainability, energy management and industrial technology, pairing venture capital with the customer access, distribution and domain expertise of a global energy management and automation leader. Its stated line is "powering growth for groundbreaking founders." The firm says more than 60% of its investments have a commercial partnership with Schneider Electric. In a 2026 Crunchbase News interview, global head Amit Chaturvedy put the figure near 80%, most often with the startup serving Schneider's customers as a partner and sometimes as a vendor.
Chaturvedy describes three current themes. The first is AI infrastructure and data center efficiency, with Together AI and Hammerhead as examples. The second is grid resilience, renewables and battery storage. The third is AI applied to industrials: robotics (Skild AI), warranty analytics (Axion), and lights-out manufacturing. The firm says it invests in AI for energy and industry across the full stack, plus enabling layers such as cybersecurity and data governance.
Stage Focus
The firm invests early-stage and growth. It also runs a 12-week SE Ventures Accelerator for pre-seed and seed startups. Its portfolio includes seed deals (Hammerhead, $10M seed) and later rounds (Higharc Series C, Together AI Series C), so stage is broad, from pre-seed through growth. Stage per company is not stated on the portfolio page, so none is recorded here.
Check Size
No check size is published. The fund has over EUR 1B of committed capital across vehicles, including a EUR 500M Fund II announced in November 2022. Exact check sizes are unknown.
Lead Tendency
Mixed. SE Ventures participates in rounds led by others (Together AI's $800M Series C was led by Aramco Ventures, Higharc's Series C by Insight Partners) and also takes board seats. Recorded as "both" at low confidence.
Recent Activity
- July 2026: participated in Together AI's $800M Series C at an $8.3B valuation, led by Aramco Ventures.
- July 2026: participated in Higharc's $90M Series C, led by Insight Partners.
- AlpSemi raised EUR 17M led by Yotta Capital with SE Ventures participating.
- Fabric8Labs, its most recent exit, was acquired by TDK.
- Third-party trackers list an investment in Uplight in September 2026.
The fund appears to be actively deploying.
Portfolio Highlights
The site lists about 68 companies, including nine marked as exited (Dash Energy, eIQ Mobility, EnergySage, Fabric8Labs, First-Street, Poka, RenoRun, Solstice, Tradify). The firm reports 60+ active companies, 12 exits and eight unicorns. Notable names include Skild AI, Together AI, Claroty, Augury, Scandit, AIDash, Verkor and BuildOps.
Team
- Amit Chaturvedy: Managing Partner and Global Head, joined in 2022 from Cisco, where he led corporate investments.
- Varun Jain: founding General Partner, Menlo Park, member of the Investment Committee, over a decade investing in AI-led enterprise and industrial companies.
- Julien Cristiani: General Partner, France.
- Carlos (CK) Kokron: General Partner, Menlo Park.
- Siddharth Mehta: Partner.
Decision Process
Partnership with an Investment Committee. A relationship with a Schneider Electric business unit is a major factor, so a warm path to a Schneider customer or product team likely helps.
Founder Preferences
Founders who want commercial scale and who sell into energy, buildings, data centers, utilities and industry, where Schneider is a channel or customer.
Geographic Focus
About 70% North America, 20% Europe and 10% rest of world. Headquartered in Menlo Park, California, with a presence in France.
Gaps
The site is client-rendered, so team bios, check sizes, per-company stage and dates were not available from it. Per-company domains are left null for the pipeline to resolve.