# Vives

Vives is a Private Equity based in Wavre, Belgium.

## Overview

- **Organization type:** Private Equity
- **Headquarters:** Wavre, Belgium
- **Region:** Europe
- **Address:** Wavre, Belgium
- **Founded:** 2004
- **Assets under management:** Undisclosed, estimated under €100M (Altss estimate)
- **Website:** www.vivesfund.com
- **LinkedIn:** linkedin.com/company/vives-louvain-technology-fund

## Regulatory record

- **Reports private funds:** No

## About

Vives is a private equity firm based in Wavre, Belgium. It focuses on Venture Capital investments. The firm manages $139.55 million in assets, with $13.92 million in available capital. It has a team of 5, including 4 investment professionals.

## Sectors

- Enterprise Software
- AI/ML
- Digital Health
- Energy Transition & Renewables
- Industrial Tech

## People

- Philippe Durieux — CEO & Managing Partner
- Eric Marchandise — Partner

## Questions

### Who runs investment decisions at Vives?

CEO and Managing Partner Philippe Durieux leads the investment committee alongside Partner Eric Marchandise. Both have been with the firm since its founding in 2004. The small partnership structure means every investment decision passes through the partners directly, with no delegation to junior principals or external advisors beyond the family-office network that sits on the advisory board.

### How does Vives source its deal flow?

Vives sources deals primarily through the technology-transfer office of UCLouvain and its partner universities in Belgium, France, and Switzerland. The firm also receives referrals from the 30 Belgian industrial families that co-invest alongside the fund, who often identify commercial applications for university IP within their own sectors. Vives does not rely on broad inbound founder outreach or agent-led auctions.

### What investment stages does Vives target?

Vives targets seed and Series A rounds, writing initial cheques between €500,000 and €2.5 million. The firm reserves significant capital for follow-on investments through Series B, and its evergreen structure allows it to support portfolio companies across multiple funding rounds without the forced liquidity schedules of a fixed-life fund.

### Which sectors does Vives explicitly avoid?

Vives avoids consumer internet, marketplaces, and any sector where competitive advantage does not derive from a defensible scientific or technical moat. The fund explicitly stays away from business models built primarily on customer acquisition cost arbitrage, and it has never invested in pure-play e-commerce, ad-tech, or content-platform companies.

### How is Vives related to UCLouvain?

UCLouvain is the founding anchor LP of Vives and provides a significant share of the fund's capital. The relationship goes deeper than an LP commitment — Vives has preferential access to the university's intellectual property pipeline through its technology-transfer office, and the fund's investment thesis was designed specifically to commercialise UCLouvain-originated research. UCLouvain does not manage the fund, however, and the investment team operates independently.

### Does Vives co-invest alongside other Belgian public investment funds?

Yes. Vives regularly co-invests alongside SRIW, Sambrinvest, and SFPI-FPIM, the Walloon and federal public investment arms that share its mandate of developing the Belgian technology ecosystem. These co-investors frequently join Vives-led rounds at seed and Series A stages, and Vives also welcomes family-office LPs into direct co-investments on a deal-by-deal basis.

## Related profiles

- [Viva Ventures Biotech](https://altss.com/profile/viva-ventures-biotech)
- [VIVE Venture Capital](https://altss.com/profile/vive-venture-capital)

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Last updated: 2026-06-03T20:00:00.000Z

Canonical page: https://altss.com/profile/vives

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