The Aarhus University Research Foundation is co-founder of new venture fund raising DKK 600 million for knowledge-based innovation

The Aarhus University Research Foundation has joined forces with three major business players in Central Jutland – the retail group Salling Group, the energy and telecoms company Norlys, and the Holch Poulsen family’s holding company HEARTLAND – to establish the venture fund Delphinus Venture Capital, which has a capital base of DKK 600 million. The fund will be based at Incuba in Katrinebjerg, Aarhus.

According to a press release from the Aarhus University Research Foundation, the ambition behind the venture fund is for the four partners to serve as “a driving force in the existing start-up ecosystem in East and Central Jutland, with a particular focus on research-based start-ups.” 

From knowledge to business

Aarhus University rector Brian Bech Nielsen, who chairs the board of the Aarhus University Research Foundation, has been involved in establishing the venture fund. He is very enthusiastic about the new opportunity for the university’s researchers and students to apply for funding to turn entrepreneurial ideas into businesses.    

“Society has high expectations that research will also drive business development and provide solutions to the challenges we face – and at Aarhus University, we are already delivering on this mission. In recent years, we’ve seen a growing number of the university’s researchers generate outstanding ideas that can advance development and provide solutions through commercialisation,” the rector writes in a message on medarbejdere.au.dk.

The rector sees it as crucial that researchers with entrepreneurial talent have access to capital to turn their ideas into knowledge-intensive businesses rooted in East and Central Jutland. 

Untapped potential

Brian Bech Nielsen also points out that there is untapped potential when it comes to leveraging the university's knowledge and innovation into business:

“As rector of Aarhus University, I meet researchers and students brimming with ideas and initiative, and companies founded by AU researchers have attracted almost DKK 3 billion in investments over the past five years,” the rector writes in his announcement. 

Delphinus Venture Capital is a so-called evergreen fund, also known as an open fund, and will invest from pre-seed to scale-up with a focus on value creation. The name refers to the dolphins in AU's seal. Mathias Brink Lorenz is the director of the foundation. 

This text is machine translated and post-edited by Cecillia Jensen