TiLT Capital Partners

Nicolas Celier and Pierre-Yves Lucas co-founded the firm in 2021 and lead the investment committee alongside Partner Linh Nguyen. Celier's background includes infrastructure investing at Ardian and Meridiam, while Lucas built European renewable-energy platforms before launching TiLT. The compact partnership operates with a flat decision structure, which the firm describes as essential for moving quickly on mid-market infrastructure deals where seller processes are competitive.

TiLT relies heavily on its partners' operating relationships built over two decades inside major European infrastructure platforms. Rather than running a broad auction-process funnel, the firm targets corporate carve-outs, family-owned energy-service operators, and project developers needing growth equity — situations where a sector-specialist mandate and Article 9 status differentiate TiLT from generalist infrastructure bidders. The firm's French and Iberian regional density also allows it to act on sub-€100 million enterprise-value opportunities that are too small for large-cap infrastructure funds.

TiLT is neither — it is an independent private equity asset manager. The firm deploys a traditional closed-end fund structure with third-party institutional limited partners. Its investment posture is closer to infrastructure private equity than venture capital: it takes significant minority or control stakes in companies with existing contracted or near-contracted revenue, avoiding technology-risk stage bets entirely.

TiLT executes direct equity investments into operating companies, not fund commitments. The firm's Article 9 mandate requires line-of-sight to measurable environmental outcomes for every holding, which is difficult to achieve through third-party fund vehicles. Its confirmed transactions, including the Idex investment made alongside SBO France, demonstrate a preference for structured direct deals, often in consortium with like-minded co-investors.

TiLT targets growth and expansion-stage companies within the energy transition ecosystem. The firm explicitly avoids venture-stage technology risk and focuses on businesses with existing assets, proven operating models, and contracted or near-contracted revenue. Typical transaction sizes land between €50 million and €500 million in enterprise value, with TiLT deploying equity checks scaled to its debut fund's target above €250 million.

TiLT Capital Partners is classified as an Article 9 fund under the EU's Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR). This is the strictest classification, requiring that the investment objective is a positive environmental outcome and that 100% of holdings contribute to that objective. The classification functions as a binding investment-policy constraint: any acquisition target must demonstrate a verifiable carbon-abatement pathway or be excluded — a line generalist infrastructure funds do not uniformly enforce.

TiLT's Article 9 mandate creates binding exclusions across its portfolio: no conventional fossil-fuel generation, no gas peaking plants, no internal-combustion mobility assets, and no industrial processes without a verifiable decarbonization plan. The firm also avoids venture-stage technology companies where the environmental outcome is not yet measurable. This sector exclusion list is structural — it is embedded in the fund's regulatory documentation rather than existing as a discretionary investment-policy preference.