Dr Sabine Hampel, founder and General Partner at GRIF – Global Resilience Innovation Funds, shares her vision for investing in technologies that strengthen Europe’s security and independence.
Can you present your company in a few words?
GRIF – Global Resilience Innovation Funds is a venture capital fund that invests in startups in defence, aviation& space, cybersecurity, crisis management, and critical infrastructure, starting with pre-seed and seed stages through to Series B. Geographically, we are focusing on NATO and its allied countries. With this investment strategy, we allocate the money in the right place – at disruptive technologies with fast adaptation to support Europe to achieve higher sovereignty.
In the future, both public and private capital should reach the established technologies of large corporations, as well as the innovative and agile startups and their scalable business models. With our investment strategy, we enable more efficient capital allocation while contributing to a more resilient society. We aim not only to be economically successful, but we are also convinced that we contribute to preserving the foundations of a free and democratic society. This investment concept is aimed at professional investors, family offices, institutional investors, and strategic partners who aim to generate attractive returns while contributing to geopolitical stability and civil protection.
GRIF has a military and operational background as well as financial roots, a network in the armed forces, the economy and in the capital market.
How can Luxembourg’s ecosystem help you grow?
The Luxembourg financial system, with its extremely good financial service providers, is the perfect ecosystem for us to offer investors and start-ups a regulatory secure environment. With the help of good cooperation with our service providers and the good ecosystem and network in Luxembourg, we want to reach our target of EUR 250 million as quickly as possible.
We are currently fundraising to make Europe sovereign and achieve a decent return. We are very proud to have our first investment with the German rocket launcher “HyImpulse” – this company did the first German successful suborbital launch in Australia.
“We aim not only to be economically successful, but we are also convinced that we contribute to preserving the foundations of a free and democratic society.”
How do you see your company evolving in the next 2 years?
We want to quickly reach the final closing of EUR 250 million in order to take advantage of the excellent investment opportunities in the start-up sector – in the areas of defence, aerospace, critical infrastructure, cyber security and crisis management. We support start-ups with our network in their go-to-market strategy and in scaling their business model in both the commercial and military sectors. Our goal is to develop sustainably successful companies in order to provide the best exit opportunities.
