Corporate venture capital – the middleman between start-up and OEM

The global trucking industry is fast-approaching a period of significant change, and manufacturers have been pushed to hunt down specialists in emerging technologies.

Back in February 2017, Scania launched a venture capital (VC) fund to invest in high-growth companies with a ‘strategic relevance’ to the trucking industry, and the wider ‘Scania Ecosystem’. This has been an approach taken by many global players in the automotive industry, from large Tier 1 suppliers to passenger car OEMs and other truck and bus manufacturers. Volvo Group Venture Capital, for example, has operated since 1997 and has invested in the likes of platooning start-up Peloton and Decisiv, which develops software as a service (SaaS) for truck fleets.