Capricorn Investment Group Takes 20% Stake in Norselab's European Impact Investment Platform
4.1.2022 21:54:00 EET | Business Wire | Press release
Capricorn Investment Group makes their first move into the Nordic venture space with their investment in Norselab, an Oslo-based European impact investment manager for private capital.
“With their thoughtful approach to innovative impact investments, Norselab stands out as an ideal partner to expand our presence into the Nordics and Europe. We are thrilled to help scale their impact investment platform,” says Michaela Edwards, Partner at Capricorn Investment Group.
Edwards is the partner in charge of the investment into Norselab. The deal, offering Capricorn’s Sustainable Investment Fund a 20% stake in Norselab, relied heavily on their belief in the team and the structure that they have built.
“The team behind Norselab has an outstanding track record in building and scaling tech companies, in addition to a clear ambition to build a larger ecosystem of funds. These were key factors weighing in on our investment decision,” adds Edwards.
Both firms share the belief that impact investments will offer the best opportunities over the coming decades. Through investment into companies that target industries in need of transformation, Norselab aims to ignite disruption, and to create potential for solid returns and massive impact.
Unexplored opportunities in the Nordics
Capricorn’s investment in Norselab marks its first, strategic move into the Nordics. According to Edwards, the Nordics are still unexplored territory from a global perspective, and offer plentiful opportunities for both impact and high returns. She highlights that Norway, with its ongoing green shift and hunger for innovation, offers a great location from which Norselab can expand to Europe.
Building system value
Norselab launched its first impact-focused venture fund, Meaningful Equity I, in 2020. On the back of a solid tailwind in terms of market trends and deal flow, the impact investor is expanding its platform with several new funds. This means a significant upscaling of the organization where creating system value through knowledge sharing is the key to accelerate growth and value creation across the ecosystem.
“Our partnership with Capricorn Investment Group will connect us with their globally leading impact investment ecosystem. Being part of their impact funds also means that our portfolio companies will gain greater access to international resources, co-investors and talents,” says Yngve Tvedt, Norselab Founder and Chief Investment Officer.
Uncompromising on impact
Tvedt adds that Capricorn’s solid impact profile was decisive for Norselab’s decision to bring on board a larger capital partner.
“Impact is at the heart of our investment philosophy, and core to the products and services of the companies we invest in. We want to build Norselab into a leading European impact investment platform, and believe Capricorn is a match made in heaven for scaling Norselab while staying true to our fundamental DNA,” says Tvedt.
With the Sustainable Investment Fund, Capricorn Investment Group aims to back purpose-built investment managers with an authentic vision around impact.
“We’re not in business to create incremental change, we are aiming to drive systemic change,” comments Edwards.
A fit-for-scale platform
Norselab’s CEO, Erik Syvertsen, explains how they created an international fund platform for venture investments with the building blocks that most market participants would recognize from larger institutional structures.
“As we established our first fund, we knew that a robust infrastructure with scalability would be essential if we were to have international ambitions both in terms of deal flow and the ability to attract capital. Capricorn recognized the value in the ecosystem we are aiming to build in and around Norselab. It’s a privilege for us to work with a capital partner that is aligned with our values and ambitions across the board,” says Syvertsen.
Norwegian capital partners joining the party
Two significant Norwegian capital partners are also part of the deal. Long-term Norselab investor Ness, Risan & Partners, invests in the impact investment platform to offer Norselab’s attractive impact products to their large Nordic customer base. Joakim Lehmkuhl is also among the new capital partners. His connection to international investor groups will give the Norselab team solid traction to scale its platform out of Norway.
About Capricorn
Capricorn is one of the largest mission-aligned firms in the world, and has since its inception in 2000 grown to manage more than $10 billion in multi-asset classes for foundations and institutional investors, through their range of impact-focused fund products. Their Sustainable Investors Fund (SIF) is a private equity partnership whose investment objective is to create significant value through ownership and early stage investment in public and private asset managers who incorporate sustainability as a key driver of investment returns.
The firm has offices in New York City and Palo Alto, and was born from a belief that sustainable investment practices can enhance risk-adjusted returns. Underlying this investment approach is a deep desire to demonstrate the huge investment potential that resides in breakthrough commercial solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.
About Norselab
Norselab is a leading impact investment platform based out of Oslo, Norway. With an uncompromising focus on net positive impact, Norselab invests in fast-growing, meaningful companies that ignite radical changes in traditional industries.
Norselab established their internationally regulated fund structure in 2020, and closed their first venture fund, Norselab Meaningful Equity I, in 2021. Norselab is currently scaling up its activities, and plans to launch several new funds in 2022, all with impact at their core.
About Ness, Risan & Partners
Ness, Risan & Partners AS (NRP) is an independent and privately-owned investment firm. Its clients include family offices, private investors, investment companies, foundations, trusts and institutional investors. NRP offers direct investment and fund solutions within the real estate, shipping and offshore sectors. The company was founded in 2000 by Christian Ness and Ragnvald Risan, and has more than 70 employees and an AUM of more than $ 1Billion.
Interviews on request.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220104005857/en/
Contact information
Media contact:
Maria de Perlinghi
Partner, Impact & Communications at Norselab
+47 92221959
maria@norselab.com
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Airship Announces Results Guarantee; Releases Commissioned Study Finding 476% ROI for Composite Organization22.7.2026 18:00:00 EEST | Press release
Airship, the mobile-first customer experience platform leader, today announced its Airship Results Guarantee, a corporate commitment to achieve predetermined business outcomes for new customers. Concurrently, the company released the results of a separate, commissioned Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Airship, July 2026. The study found that a composite organization based on interviewed customers achieved a 476% Return on Investment (ROI) with a payback period of less than six months. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260722832535/en/ Airship has launched a new results guarantee offer to stand behind its value. Alongside this offer, the team shared the results of a new Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study commissioned with Forrester Consulting illustrating that a composite organization achieved a 476% ROI with a payback period of less than six months. “We introduced
Arrakis Comes out of Stealth With $38M to Help Industrial Enterprises Compete in the AI Era22.7.2026 16:56:00 EEST | Press release
Arrakis, the AI deployment company helping industrial companies install AI agents for mission-critical operations, today announced a $30 million Series A led by Blossom Capital, with participation from existing investor Accel, which also led the company's $7.5 million seed round. The round brings total funding to around $38 million and includes backing from prominent technology leaders, including Olivier Pomel, founder and chief executive of Datadog, Olivier Godement, OpenAI’s Head of business products and Junaid Hussein, founder of Cambridge Aerospace. Founded in January 2026 by former Accel investor Rafael Quintanilla, together with co-founders Haroun Beltaifa, Romain Fouilland and Mikhail Galkov - alumni of Palantir, DeliveryHero, Revolut, Datadog and ASML - Arrakis helps industrial companies deploy AI into core operational workflows across aerospace, energy, logistics, manufacturing, construction and telecommunications markets. Across the US and Europe, governments and businesses a
Vultr and AMD Support the University of Cambridge's TESSERA AI Project to Accelerate Global Environmental Monitoring22.7.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release
Vultr, the world’s largest privately-held cloud infrastructure company, and AMD, a leader in high-performance and AI computing, have announced their support for the University of Cambridge's Energy & Environment Group in developing TESSERA, a groundbreaking AI foundation model designed to monitor environmental change internationally at unprecedented scale. Vultr is providing the computational infrastructure, based on AMD Instinct MI325X accelerators, necessary to generate global embeddings covering Earth's land surface from 2017 to 2025, enabling applications in agriculture, biodiversity conservation, and renewable energy infrastructure monitoring. The collaboration represents a significant advancement in applying artificial intelligence to planetary conservation challenges. TESSERA processes data from European Space Agency Sentinel satellites to create detailed embeddings - compressed AI representations - of every 10-meter square of Earth's surface. TESSERA represents the most accurat
Omilia Appoints Ryan Kam as Chief Marketing Officer to Lead Global Brand and Growth Strategy22.7.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release
Omilia, a global leader in Self-Learning Agentic CX, today announced the appointment of Ryan Kam as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Ryan will be responsible for Omilia's global brand, demand generation, and marketing strategy as the company scales its go-to-market presence across enterprise markets. In his new role, Kam will own Omilia's global marketing function, spanning brand strategy, demand generation, product marketing, analyst relations and communications. He joins at a moment of significant commercial momentum: Omilia has seen accelerating enterprise demand across all industries and is investing in a marketing engine built to match the pace of its growth. Ryan Kam brings more than 20 years of marketing leadership across some of the most recognized names in enterprise technology. Most recently, he served as CMO at Egnyte, a leader in cloud content security and governance. Prior to that, Kam held the CMO role at LogicMonitor, where he drove growth for one of the leading infrastruc
Echodyne Announces ATAK Integration for MESA® Radar Platform22.7.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release
Echodyne, the radar platform company, today announced the availability of an Android Team Awareness Kit (ATAK) plugin for its MESA® radar platform. The integration enables users to configure, control, and visualize data from Echodyne radars within the ATAK environment, supporting military, public safety, and security operations that rely on TAK for shared situational awareness. The plugin extends radar management and visualization capabilities to ATAK users, allowing high-fidelity radar data and system controls to be accessed through a familiar operational interface. By integrating radar data into existing TAK workflows, organizations can streamline deployment, reduce operator workload, and improve access to real-time situational awareness. TAK is a government-developed geospatial platform used across U.S. military, federal, state, and local government organizations, as well as by U.S. partner nations. According to the U.S. Army TAK Product Center, the TAK ecosystem supports 15 Departm
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom