In today’s episode of our CVC series, Andreas and our CVC in-house expert, Jeppe Høier, talk with Ann-Sofie Ekberg, CEO of Volvo Cars Tech Fund, the corporate venture arm of Volvo Cars. Founded in 2018, the fund invests directly from Volvo’s balance sheet, backing startups in mobility, sustainability, and digitalization. While prioritizing strategic relevance, the fund maintains a disciplined investment approach, engaging with startups at various stages—predominantly Series A and B, with some selective seed investments.
Under Ann-Sofie’s leadership, the fund has developed a structured approach to ensure investments align with Volvo’s readiness to adopt new technologies. She emphasizes the importance of startups having diverse customer bases beyond Volvo to avoid over-reliance. In this conversation, Ann-Sofie also shares insights into balancing strategic and financial priorities, how Volvo collaborates with competitors in CVC, and why she believes platform-based vehicle architectures will unlock faster innovation and startup adoption in the automotive industry.
Watch it here or add it to your episodes on Apple or Spotify 🎧 chapters for easy navigation available on the Spotify/Apple episode.
✍️ Show notes
A look at the person behind - who is Ann-Sofie Ekberg?
I am an eager learner and have always been. I´m curious about people, technology, finance, organizations, and society. With that curiosity comes a drive to at least do my job the best I can.
I have had a mantra that “how I treat others is my business card”. That's what people will remember, not exactly my title or my hierarchical level. I think that helps to influence people to make good results, and it helps business partners to want to work with me/us. So, I try to be nice, I try to have fun, I try to see everyone
I am also a mother of three children, so I want to show them that mums can have a successful work (now they think I work too much, so probably I have shown that side too much). And jokes aside, I am a hard worker. I think every person should use their capabilities to do something great.
Principles and learnings for building a CVC entity
From the very start, we have had the mission to support Volvo Cars' engagement in disruptive technology development that will improve safety and elevate quality of life for Volvo Customers.
That means that we do minority investments in early-stage companies that support the long-term strategy of Volvo Cars.
So, with our investments, we help to address tech gaps or hedge tech gaps and improve manufacturing/supply chain efficiencies. It's important for us to have a business stakeholder who wants to explore or collaborate with our portfolio company.
Key learnings from your journey
Collaborate to innovate! And new innovations are born through collaboration (example B). An engaged internal sponsor is key.
Strategic investments require time to mature, and it's required to make some bold bets to ensure we maintain our position as a technology leader in the future.
And by having the technology verified by a big OEM, the startup gets wind in their sails for the next financing round. Communicate your shared success. Build the brand for both.
For that success to happen, we need to find and invest in startups that match with the right time and speed in the lifecycle, both for the OEM and the Startup. If the timing isn't right, then we will not be the best owner, and that can be hard for us as an investment team to swallow. Sometimes, we see absolutely great companies, but due to the time, we need to accept that it won't be successful and, therefore, let it go. Takes some time to understand that.
No innovation circus, work with structured short-term goals
Startups need more customers than the OEM.
How Volvo Cars Tech Fund is driving sustainable innovation through its investments?
I would say that all Tech Fund's focus areas contribute to Volvo Cars' sustainability targets, which are aggressive. By 2030, we target to be 90% electrified and by that reach a 65-75% CO2 reduction per car vs the 2018 baseline. By 2040, we target to be a circular business.
So we focus on:
Electrification and energy efficiency, which is directly impacting CO2; for example, we have a portfolio company with an algorithm for charging that makes the charging 30% more effective.
Software defined vehicle and in-car tech.
Sustainability and novel materials, for example, we have a surface material company that uses flax instead of plastic pellets and a pretty recent investment in a polyester recycling company. With these investments, we show that we are walking the talk, and at the same time, our stakeholders in the business learn how to specify for a greener and more circular car and can innovate together with these startups and traditional tier 1s. Last, I would say that we are impacting sustainability by investing in things like:
Industry 4.0 and supply chain & logistics. We have a portfolio company that helps do digital twins, meaning that we know where things are installed and stored, so it is more effective and we have another portfolio company that is helping the business to have supply chain tracking of the batteries. So, I know all my team members are really keen on finding startups that impact not only Volvo Cars' strategic value or the Tech fund's future financial performance but also have a great impact on sustainability topics.
An area we are learning more about as we speak is investments that help reduce our biodiversity footprint.
Deep Dive into how to work with corporate stakeholders.
Our Board is constituted by Volvo Cars' Senior leadership
Our Team is pretty small; we are 7 in total, and we have a global outreach with team members in 3 regions. Different backgrounds help to foster diverse opinions.
Close alignment with the Engineering and Manufacturing leadership team
We have been around for 6 years, so we have started to have good traction internally, and people reach out to us for problem statements or when they have met a cool startup.
Externally, it helps to have a couple of successful portfolio companies and a good brand name.
Your latest succesful engagement with core stakeholders
I think we have success stories every week; it doesn’t have to be big ones, in my view. It is important that actions are happening and that the next steps are planned.
One area I can talk extra about is our manufacturing innovation team, who are really on their toes when they find something that is interesting. It's so great to see other people excited and wanting to make a difference and that we make that difference together with different tools.
So I guess, having internal people understanding that startups require faster decisions, for eg financing rounds and for us doing a proper DD we need to agree pretty early on that this is an interesting startup or not for us.
Three main factors that led to your success
Collaboration with the right startups! And the ability to understand that innovation success takes time, we are in it for the long term.
Right in life cycle and ability to scale
Investing in interesting companies so our board sees that we contribute great things is also important at the end of the day.
Advice to young people in corporations that would like to work within venturing
Try! Jump! Move! Don’t be afraid to do something you haven’t done before
Don't stay in a job that you for some reason don't like.
Tell me what you want, don’t be shy.
Work life is potentially pretty long (if you don't do great exits 😊 ), so make sure you have a good balance between work and private life.
Most counterintuitive learning
It's interesting that we see our competitors at events. We often compete for the same companies, but when we invest in the same startups, we work together for their success. So, helping the startup becomes more important than competing with other car brands.
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