Deep tech IP roll ups & investment consolidation: A New Hope?
The hosts:
Silvan Aeschlimann, CTRL-S
Ben Murphy, Kiko Ventures
What is this Ripple about?
Optimizing solutions to the moment; not being passive – both on the startup side and the investor side. IP rollups, secondaries funds, evergreen funding structures.
An open ideation conversation about these strategies.
This session asks what a deliberately consolidated version of the sector would look like: who assembles the components, who pays, who deploys them, and what has to exist for the strongest pieces to find each other instead of disappearing with the companies that built them.
DAC will be leaned on as a case study, the cycle is furthest along there, but the session is not DAC-specific.
Why this topic timely or urgent in 2026
Consolidation is already underway without design: Occidental acquired Carbon Engineering and Holocene; Zero Carbon Systems, Global Thermostat; Climeworks, Antecy; Skytree, ReCarbn; Airhive, Carbyon. Of 150+ DAC companies founded, 69 are already inactive, acquired, or pivoted.
Alantra have raised a secondaries fund.
Twenty years in, with +5 exits >$1bn under its belt IP Group has built a funding structure designed to ride out cycles.
Key questions or challenges being explored
How to optimise solutions being pursued in the moment – by design or by accident
IP roll up
Secondaries fund
Can evergreen funds be a way to ride the wave out entirely
The key tension or debate at the heart of this discussion
Can structure change the outcome in a moment like 2026, or does the cycle decide regardless?
What separates a portfolio that compounds from one that just costs money to hold?
Is a funding retrenchment an opportunity for investors and operators?
Who would get the most value from attending this Ripple?
Investors holding deep tech positions where the company may not be the right vehicle for the technology
Corporate development and R&D leads sourcing technology externally in energy, industrials, and gas separation
Operating companies weighing build-internally against source-externally on a specific component – especially in DAC
Founders deciding now what happens to their IP and their team's knowledge