Cummins has bought itself a seat at Emerald Technology Ventures, the Swiss climate-tech venture firm offering startup access, tailored deal-flow, investment intelligence and another route towards industrial decarbonisation. Welcome to the pretend green casino, where Microsoft, Chevron, Caterpillar, Nestlé, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and now Cummins can gather around the felt, talk sustainability and wait for somebody else to invent the future.
Cummins has found another green table to sit at.
On 28 August 2026, Cummins Inc. announced that it had joined Emerald Technology Ventures as a Limited Partner. The Zurich-based venture-capital firm manages and advises more than €1.3 billion from offices in Zurich, Toronto and Singapore, investing in technologies covering energy, electrification, digitalisation, mobility and industrial decarbonisation.
For Cummins, the attraction is not simply financial. Emerald promises targeted startup access, tailored deal-flow, regular sector deep-dives, priority access to investment teams, rapid pilot programmes and connections across its corporate and technology network.
In other words, Cummins has bought chips.
Now it gets to see which tables Emerald thinks are hot.
Who Dealt Cummins In?
Jeff Wiltrout, Cummins Vice President of Corporate Strategy, says the Emerald Technology Ventures relationship gives Cummins another channel through which to identify and evaluate technologies capable of supporting its customers and growth strategy. Wiltrout already oversees strategy, business development, partnerships, mergers, acquisitions and divestitures at Cummins, so this particular stack of chips appears to have landed on the appropriate desk.
On the Emerald side, Christoph Frei, Partner and Head of Energy, welcomed Cummins into the LP community with the usual spread of corporate superlatives: industrial scale, technology leadership, engineering excellence and a long-term commitment to sustainability.
Emerald’s social-media rollout supplied a broader cast list. Its Cummins announcement tagged Christoph W. Frei, Stephen Marcus, Shreyas Puranik, Dr. Simon Lange and Srikanth Bala (Subramaniam). Puranik subsequently said he was proud to have played a part in bringing the partnership together and looked forward to staying close to emerging technologies, startups and the wider venture ecosystem.
There you go, Google.
Jeff Wiltrout. Christoph Frei. Stephen Marcus. Shreyas Puranik. Dr. Simon Lange. Srikanth Bala. Cummins. Emerald Technology Ventures.
Everyone has a seat assignment.
Emerald Technology Ventures: The House Always Looks Green
Emerald Technology Ventures has been dealing this game since 2000. It began as the venture-capital arm of Sustainable Asset Management, the organisation behind the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, before separating and becoming Emerald Technology Ventures in 2007.
Gina Domanig, Emerald Managing Partner and CEO, has since built the operation into a substantial global venture platform. Emerald says it evaluates thousands of startup opportunities each year, channels technology and investment intelligence towards corporate partners and operates across some of the most fashionable tables in modern industry: clean energy, water, advanced materials, industrial automation, artificial intelligence and electrification.
The investor room is impressive.
Emerald itself names Microsoft, Temasek, ABB, Caterpillar, Nestlé, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Chevron among the major companies to have invested through its platform. More than 50 Fortune 500 corporations have apparently joined the wider network.
Microsoft and Nestlé at one end.
Caterpillar and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries at the other.
Chevron near the bar.
Now Cummins has wandered in wearing a sustainability badge.
Welcome to the green room.
Schmack Biogas: Cash Out, Buy Back In, Watch The Table Catch Fire
Start with Schmack Biogas, because this one is fucking art.
Emerald originally invested in the German biogas company before its 2006 flotation on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. In March 2007, Emerald announced that it had sold its remaining Schmack position after the share price had risen substantially following the IPO.
Philipp Hasler, then an Emerald Investment Director and former Schmack director, was understandably pleased. Emerald described the investment as having generated an “impressive return” for investors.
Chips cashed.
Winning hand declared.
Everyone leaves the table looking clever.
Except Emerald came back.
In April 2008, Schmack Biogas carried out a cash capital increase worth approximately €7.1 million. Emerald Technology Ventures subscribed the entire fucking thing, taking hundreds of thousands of newly issued shares and returning to a company it had exited while celebrating the previous result.
Why walk away from the roulette wheel after winning?
Put the chips back down.
By October 2009, provisional insolvency administration had been ordered over Schmack Biogas. Formal insolvency proceedings followed in January 2010.
Venture capital produces losing investments. That is not remotely remarkable on its own. The beautiful part is the sequence: Emerald exited while celebrating an impressive return, came back with roughly €7.1 million, and eighteen months later Schmack was heading into insolvency proceedings.
Then open Emerald’s current corporate history.
Its entry for 2008-09 describes how the financial crisis battered venture capital, before praising Emerald’s “solid track record of minimizing risk.”
April 2008: €7.1 million on Schmack.
October 2009: provisional insolvency.
Nothing more from the croupier, thank you.
Xunlight: $1.9 Million Of Assets, $28.5 Million Of Debt
Perhaps solar offered a safer table.
Emerald Technology Ventures backed Xunlight, the Toledo flexible solar-panel company developed around technology originating at the University of Toledo. Emerald participated in its financing and Markus Moor, an Emerald partner who is now Senior Partner and Chief Investment Officer, later appeared on Xunlight’s board.
The promise was seductive enough. Flexible solar panels, emerging manufacturing technology and another wager on the clean-energy future.
By 2014, Xunlight was in Chapter 7 liquidation.
Bankruptcy filings reported by the Toledo Blade showed approximately $1.9 million in assets against $28.5 million in debts. State agencies were owed more than $7 million, while the University of Toledo was reportedly owed around $1.38 million.
The largest creditor was Emerald Technology Ventures.
Amount owed?
Approximately $11.4 million.
That is less a losing hand than discovering somebody has removed the roulette wheel, the carpet and half the fucking casino while you were ordering another drink.
Cummins now says its Emerald Technology Ventures membership provides access to structured market intelligence, sector insights, technology evaluation and startup deal-flow.
Presumably Xunlight remains somewhere in the historical training material.
Evergreen Solar: Another Green Darling Finds The Cashier Closed
Then there is Evergreen Solar, one of the recognisable names from Emerald’s early clean-tech portfolio.
Emerald predecessor material promoted Evergreen as one of the companies it had backed, while former Emerald figure Nicholas Parker has been credited with leading an early investment in the solar manufacturer. Evergreen ultimately became Nasdaq-listed and emerged as one of the better-known businesses of the first big solar investment wave.
For a while, it looked like another green number had landed.
Then the cards turned.
Evergreen closed its Massachusetts manufacturing plant and cut approximately 800 jobs. In August 2011, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, reporting approximately $485.6 million owed to creditors.
Massachusetts had previously committed tens of millions of dollars in financial assistance and incentives to the business.
This does not establish that Emerald itself carried the eventual bankruptcy loss. Venture firms enter and exit businesses at different stages, Evergreen had been publicly traded for years, and pretending otherwise would turn a good dagger into a bullshit one.
The point is more interesting anyway.
Emerald was standing near the front of a clean-tech era in which green promise, venture capital, government enthusiasm and industrial salvation were repeatedly bundled onto the same betting slip.
Some bets paid.
Some went magnificently fucking sideways.
TerraLUX: Rebranding The Lights Before They Went Out
Another Emerald Technology Ventures bet was TerraLUX, the Colorado LED and intelligent-lighting business.
Emerald led TerraLUX’s $5.6 million Series A financing in 2010 alongside Access Venture Partners. Two years later, TerraLUX raised another $18.3 million Series B, with Emerald participating alongside Generation Investment Management and Access Venture Partners. Emerald also appeared in later financing activity around the company.
The company kept evolving. LED lighting became connected lighting. Connected lighting became building intelligence. By May 2017, TerraLUX had rebranded itself as Sielo, promising cloud-connected building technology sitting at the junction of power, light and data.
It was a beautiful piece of modern technology language.
New identity.
New vision.
Internet of Things.
Building intelligence.
Cloud connectivity.
Blue-sky future.
Three months later, Sielo reportedly ceased operations after running out of money and began looking for a buyer.
The brand had barely finished drying.
Casino management regrets to announce that the lights will now be switched off.
Whitney Rockley And The TerraLUX Bet
The TerraLUX investment also puts another Emerald name into the record: Whitney Rockley, identified in investment records alongside Emerald Technology Ventures on the company’s financing.
That matters less because TerraLUX somehow proves Emerald cannot identify technology; it obviously does not. Venture portfolios are constructed around the expectation that some businesses will fail while a smaller number generate outsized returns.
What it does give us is another example of what Cummins has actually bought access to.
People.
Judgement.
Deal-flow.
Networks.
Sector expertise.
Historical wins.
Historical losses.
The whole fucking casino.
That is considerably more interesting than pretending Cummins has simply made another passive green investment.
Venture Capital Is Supposed To Lose
There is an obvious point worth making before anybody at Emerald begins clutching the roulette table.
Venture capital is supposed to contain failures.
A VC firm with no failed investments is either extraordinarily lucky, extraordinarily cautious or not really doing venture capital. Emerald has operated for more than 25 years, survived several market cycles, raised substantial funds, built relationships with enormous corporations and undoubtedly backed businesses that generated successful exits.
Schmack, Xunlight, Evergreen Solar and TerraLUX do not prove that Emerald Technology Ventures is incompetent.
They prove something much more useful for this article.
The glossy language of risk mitigation, technology evaluation, sustainable transformation and investment intelligence still ends at the same place every other investment business does.
Someone studies the numbers.
Someone assesses the technology.
Someone interviews the founders.
Someone models the market.
Someone talks about scalability.
Then someone pushes the chips forward and hopes the fucking horse runs.
The VIP Room
The more interesting part of Emerald may therefore be its corporate network rather than any individual startup loss.
Emerald celebrated its 25th anniversary by highlighting relationships with more than 50 Fortune 500 corporations and naming Microsoft, Temasek, ABB, Caterpillar, Nestlé, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Chevron among its investors.
That is quite a collection to gather beneath a sustainability banner.
Caterpillar, Cummins’ enormous industrial rival and fellow diesel heavyweight, already knows the room.
Chevron, one of the biggest oil and gas companies on the planet, apparently qualifies for a seat at the climate-tech table too.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries brings another sprawling industrial portfolio.
ABB brings electrification and automation.
Microsoft brings data centres, AI and an increasingly ravenous appetite for power.
Nestlé brings enough corporate history (and a Cepac-shaped problem) to keep an accountability website occupied until the sun burns out.
Temasek brings Singaporean state capital.
And now Cummins Inc. arrives with $CMI stitched onto its jacket.
Calling this a sustainability network is not necessarily wrong.
Calling it a fucking insurgency would be ambitious.
Cummins Finds Its People
For Cummins, the fit is almost too neat.
The company is trying to position itself simultaneously inside diesel, natural gas, hydrogen, batteries, electrification, data-centre power, alternative fuels and whatever comes next. It wants the existing combustion business, the transitional technologies and a place near the front of whatever eventually replaces them.
Emerald Technology Ventures offers an elegant way to buy visibility over the next set of bets without Cummins having to invent every technology itself.
Jeff Wiltrout gets another channel for identifying technologies.
Shreyas Puranik gets closer to emerging startups.
Christoph Frei gets another enormous industrial LP.
Stephen Marcus, Dr. Simon Lange and Srikanth Bala appeared in Emerald’s public welcome around the partnership.
Gina Domanig gets another global corporate name inside the Emerald network.
Everybody gets chips.
The startups get access to industrial giants.
The industrial giants get access to startups.
Emerald sits between them and deals.
This is not particularly mysterious.
It is venture capital.
What makes it funny is dressing the whole fucking casino in leaves.
Pretend Green Looks Good Under Casino Lighting
Cummins describes the Emerald relationship in the language of industrial decarbonisation, emerging technologies and the transition to a lower-carbon future.
This is, after all, Cummins.
The same Cummins that agreed to a $1.675 billion civil penalty in the United States following allegations and findings concerning illegal emissions-control software in hundreds of thousands of Ram diesel vehicles.
Now it is buying access to a climate-tech venture network whose corporate investor roll includes Chevron and Caterpillar.
Beautiful.
Nobody needs to pretend that clean technology itself is fraudulent. It plainly is not. Batteries, electrification, energy efficiency, water technologies, grid systems and low-carbon industrial technologies all matter.
The theatre begins when giant incumbent corporations buy seats inside the innovation ecosystem and everybody starts behaving as though proximity to the green chips makes the existing stack disappear.
Cummins does not become green because it joins Emerald Technology Ventures.
Chevron does not become green because it invests in climate technology.
Caterpillar does not become green because its name appears beside sustainability funds.
They become corporations with another bet on the table.
Some of those bets may genuinely help change the world.
Some will make money.
Some will disappear.
And, if Emerald’s own history is any guide, occasionally somebody will cash out an impressive return, wander back into the casino, put €7.1 million on the table and discover eighteen months later that the fucking cashier has gone insolvent.
Welcome aboard, Cummins.
Place your bets.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project
Sources
- Cummins – Cummins Joins Emerald To Advance Customer-Focused Innovation Across Power, Mobility And Energy
- Emerald Technology Ventures – Cummins Joins Emerald To Advance Customer-Focused Innovation Across Power, Mobility And Energy
- Emerald Technology Ventures – About / History
- Emerald Technology Ventures – Investors & Clients
- Science|Business – Emerald Technology Ventures Exits Cleantech Start-Ups
- Renewable Carbon – Schmack Biogas Insolvent
- CompanyHouse – Schmack Biogas Insolvency Record
- Toledo Blade – Xunlight Corp. Files For Bankruptcy Liquidation
- CBS Boston – Evergreen Solar Files For Bankruptcy
- WBUR – Once-Promising Evergreen Solar Goes Bankrupt
- Gaebler – TerraLUX $5.6 Million Series A
- Gaebler – TerraLUX $18.3 Million Series B
- TerraLUX – TerraLUX Becomes Sielo
- US Environmental Protection Agency – Cummins Vehicle Emission Control Violations Settlement