BMW i Ventures

🚀 The countdown is on… 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗟𝗧𝗜𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗘 𝗘𝗨𝗥𝗢𝗣𝗘𝗔𝗡 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗨𝗣 𝗘𝗩𝗘𝗡𝗧 at IAA MOBILITY on 𝗦𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟭𝟬𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝗻 𝗠𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗵! We’re proud to be supporting the Ultimate European Startup Party as a Premium Partner, bringing together Europe’s leading mobility founders and investors at the heart of Munich during IAA, one of the world’s largest automotive and mobility conferences. 📍 Where: Marienplatz, Munich 🗓️ When: September 10, 2025 from 7 PM ✨ On stage and beyond, you’ll find: ➡️ Pitches by the top 10 European mobility startups and scaleups, including winners of the EU-funded European Startup Prize for Mobility 2025: VÆRIDION, CelLife, Futurail, HivePower, Loxo, Peregrine, Syntonym, The Tyre Collective, VoltR and Upstream ➡️ Pitches and presentations with some of our most established investor peers, totalling €2B+ in AUM as a group – including UVC Partners, EIT Urban Mobility, Incharge Capital Partners, Leap435, Rethink Ventures, güil Mobility Ventures, Mobilion Ventures – plus ecosystem partners MUNICH STARTUP and Via ID - Mobivia ✨ Networking, music & drinks with Europe’s mobility innovation ecosystem At BMW i Ventures, we’re proud to back the courageous founders and innovators building the future of mobility, in fields ranging from EVs and batteries to AI, autonomous driving and transport, to sustainable supply chains. This event is the perfect stage to celebrate these bold ideas. 🌍 In the words of our friends at TUM Venture Labs and UnternehmerTUM: 𝘌𝘶𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘦𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘌𝘶𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘌𝘶𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦. 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘱𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘨𝘺 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘰𝘳𝘦. Come and meet Inga G. Grieger and Marcus Behrendt from our BMW i Ventures team in Munich next Wednesday evening. We look forward to seeing you there! 👉 Get your tickets at the link in the comments.

🚀 Welcome to the BMW i Ventures family, Rive! We’re excited to announce our investment in Rive, a company transforming how digital experiences are built. Traditionally, creating high-performance and visually rich user interfaces has been slow and fragmented, with static mockups handed off to engineering and rebuilt in code, often losing fidelity in the process. Rive bridges this gap with a unified design-to-deployment workflow that empowers designers and developers to create interactive, animated interfaces that look and perform exactly as intended across every platform. As our Managing Partner Kasper Sage put it: “Rive is not only improving design workflows—it’s reshaping how brands build digital experiences and products. By merging design and development into a unified workflow, Rive unlocks faster time to market, higher-quality UI, and frees up valuable developer time, reducing cost. We believe this sets a new standard for the next generation of interactive design.” Rive enables graphics that are not only polished and dynamic, but also run smoothly everywhere — from apps and games to embedded systems and in-car displays. 👏 Excited to partner with founders Guido Rosso and Luigi Rosso, and to join existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Two Sigma, and Duolingo. 🙏 And major congrats to our deal team!: Kasper Sage and Thomas Molleker 🔗 Read the full announcement in the comments below.

Exciting news from our portfolio company Skylo - the leading direct-to-device satellite connectivity provider 🛰️ This week, Skylo completed the first satellite voice calls using NB-NTN (narrow-band non-terrestrial network) – a major milestone for mobile connectivity. Powered by the new Skylo Voice Gateway, this is breakthrough: ⬆️ Delivers 10x+ improvement in data usage vs. existing cellular calling 📱 Opens up major scalability and monetization opportunities for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) 🚀 Combines a commercially available network with GPP standards-based protocols, AI-powered codecs, deep chipset-level integrations 🆘 Skylo’s tech already routes satellite SOS messages from consumers in emergencies directly from their smartphone - this latest innovation takes it to the next level. 🚗 At BMW i Ventures, we invested in Skylo in 2024 and are excited to continue to accompany them as they work hard to provide people with seamless and effective communication experiences, while keeping them safe, in the automotive industry and far beyond. Congratulations to Parthsarathi Trivedi, Tarun Gupta and the entire team! 🔗 Check out the link in the comments to read Michael Kan’s article in PC Mag: “Cellular Starlink Rival Skylo Teases Satellite Voice Calling for Phones” cc Samantha Huang Kaspar Sage

BMW i Ventures 🤝 TechBBQ 🇩🇰 Heading to TechBBQ in Copenhagen this week? Meet our Managing Partner Marcus Behrendt up north in the next few days, at Scandinavia‘s biggest startup and innovation event. 🗣️ We are especially excited to share that Marcus is speaking at EUVC ’s 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗽𝗼𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗩𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗖𝗮𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗶𝘁 - a full-day gathering of European corporate leaders, startup ecosystem builders, and corporate venture investors, hosted by Jeppe Høier and Andreas Munk Holm. On August 26th, Marcus will be joining Nicole LeBlanc from Woven Capital to discuss 🚘 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆 🇪🇺 We look forward to an engaging discussion, and to connecting with many new and familiar faces from across the ecosystem in the following two days at TechBBQ. cc Jeppe Høier Andreas Munk Holm David Cruz e Silva Gina Domanig Emerald Technology Ventures Mike Smeed InMotion Nicolas Sauvage TDK Ventures

♻️ Our partner CIRCULAR REPUBLIC has published their new Circular Economy Start-ups Landscape Report 2025, with insights from 2,500+ European circular startups. Some key points: 🎯  💰 Record $9.4B investment in circular startups   🇪🇺 Europe is leading globally in this space, with UK, Germany, France driving absolute numbers (and Nordics/Baltics punching above their weight)   🤖 Only 4.3% of circular startups leveraging AI at scale - there is massive untapped potential here  🏭 Gaps remain for disassembly, sorting, material refinement 🔑 Procuring a stable supply of critical raw materials remains key 𝗖𝗶𝗿𝗰𝘂𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗶𝘀𝗻'𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘀𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝘆𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 - 𝗶𝘁'𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆. The report shows that startups in the battery, energy, and mobility circularity space are attracting significant capital. ➡️ This is directly aligned with our investment fields and our mission to invest in the future of mobility. Within our portfolio, we are proud to back pioneers in these spaces, including materials innovator Bcomp Ltd (cc Christian Fischer). Our portfolio also includes rare earths recycler Cyclic Materials (cc Ahmad Ghahreman), scrap metals recycler GreenSpark Software (cc Gordon Driscoll), lithium from brine extractor Lilac (cc David Snydacker), lithium refiner Mangrove Lithium (cc Saad Dara), and many more. Thanks to CIRCULAR REPUBLIC, better ventures, UnternehmerTUM, Net Zero Insights and DISO Ventures for creating this report and for the continued collaboration. 🔗 Read the full report via the link in the comments.

We’re travelling to #NewHorizons with Handelsblatt and talking about the future of mobility💥 Catch our Managing Director and Head of Business Development Inga G. Grieger at Handelsblatt Summer Camp next week, in cooperation with Handelsblatt, WirtschaftsWoche and absatzwirtschaft 🗣️ Inga will speaking on a panel focused on rethinking our mobility of the future "Von A nach Übermorgen – Wie Mobilität neu gedacht wird" 🚗🌍🚀 The other panelists are ➡️ Inka Koljonen from MAN Truck & Bus SE ➡️ Daniela Mattheus, lawyer and independent board member at Deutsche Bahn, Die Autobahn GmbH des Bundes, Commerzbank AG, JENOPTIK Smart Mobility Solutions and more ➡️ Isabel Strehle, Head of the Department of Transport of the city of Munich Landeshauptstadt München, and ➡️ Michael Scheppe from Handelsblatt Who else will we see there? Link to the full agenda in the comments 🔗 📍 Munich Urban Colab 📅 28.08.2025 cc Handelsblatt Live Handelsblatt Media Group #HGMSummerCamp #SummerCamp2025

 🤖 AI is quietly transforming venture capital – and we’re only just getting started! From top-of-funnel intelligence to internal process optimization, it’s clear that the competitive edge no longer comes only from providing more capital, but also from using smarter tools and sharper data strategies. Within this, AI plays a fundamental role, with AI tools making a real difference, especially in deal sourcing and operational efficiency. 🗣️ At last month’s LPGP Connect Conference in San Francisco, our CFO Michael C. Hammer joined a panel of industry leaders to discuss this topic. From testing new AI tools weekly to using AI tools to optimize deal sourcing and internal workflows, Michael shared how we at BMW i Ventures are selectively embracing AI to stay ahead of the game. It was an inspiring conversation alongside Eugene Zhang (Founding Partner at TSV Capital), Kathryn Cicoletti (COO at GroundForce Capital), and Haydar Haba (Founder and Managing Partner at Andra Capital), each of whom is pushing the boundaries of how AI supports sharper, more data-driven decisions. The session was moderated by Angela Ty, Partner at CohnReznick. A big thank you to the LPGP Connect team for the invitation and for the high-quality event, insightful panels and great conversations with our peers within the ecosystem. We look forward to the next editions!

🚀 Welcome to the BMW i Ventures family, Estes Energy ! Today, we’re proud to announce our co-lead investment in Estes Energy Solutions, a California-based materials and manufacturing innovator accelerating access to electrification and enabling the transition from diesel to electric across North America. Alongside Fortescue, we have co-led ESTES’ $11M Seed round, with participation from New System Ventures, Clocktower Ventures and early investor DCVC, bringing their total funding to $20M. 🔋 ESTES is pioneering zero-emission power systems that unlock true scale and performance for the electrification of commercial and industrial markets, ranging from defense and aviation to marine, off-highway, and rail. With a pilot manufacturing line in the works, ESTES will cater to the strong interest from commercial partners and OEMs across multiple sectors, and aims to begin deploying systems to early customers in Q4 2025. Our Partner Baris Guzel says: "What makes Estes different isn’t just the unique technology – it’s the people. This is a team that’s been in the trenches, building rugged, high-density battery systems with real-world safety and scale in mind." Congratulations to Dustin Grace and the entire ESTES team. We are excited to be on this journey with you! cc Scott Walbrun Alexander Branding Samantha Huang 🔗 Link to the full press release in the comments