TORONTO, Nov. 02, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) is forming a partnership with the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) to deepen its knowledge of emerging technologies and extend its partnership network with leading entrepreneurs and ventures.
The CDL is a seed-stage program, founded by Professor Ajay Agrawal at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, which connects deep science-based ventures with serial entrepreneurs, angel investors and venture capitalists to build massively scalable companies. This new partnership with the CDL will help inform CPPIB’s view of emerging technologies in the artificial intelligence and energy sectors, and their application to both existing portfolio companies and future investment opportunities.
“At CPPIB, we’re in the business of the future,” says Mark Machin, President & CEO, CPPIB. “To fund pensions for decades, we need to be immersed in the sectors and ideas that will come to define the economies of the times. Future benefits will be paid in part by investments in companies that are only now being founded, just as today’s pensions are being paid by many companies that were nascent when contributions were beginning. By learning from entrepreneurs who are leading the evolution in such industries as energy, and others who are forging emerging industries such as AI, we can help build and support that future.”
“This is a unique partnership. It’s not every day we see a collaboration between a large-scale asset management organization and a high-tech university start-up program. However, we have a shared vision regarding the role of technological advancement in industrial evolution. We are both optimistic about the value we can bring to each other to enhance our competitiveness in our respective markets,” says Sonia Sennik, Executive Director of the CDL.
In the CDL’s AI and Energy Program Streams, ventures work with mentors to prioritize time and resources, raise capital from visionary investors, and engage with leading scientists and inventors. The CDL’s objective-setting process, the core of the program, helps companies avoid distractions and focus on what’s most important in transitioning from science projects to scalable businesses.
About CPPIB
Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) is a professional investment management organization that invests the funds not needed by the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) to pay current benefits on behalf of 20 million contributors and beneficiaries. In order to build a diversified portfolio of CPP assets, CPPIB invests in public equities, private equities, real estate, infrastructure and fixed income instruments. Headquartered in Toronto, with offices in Hong Kong, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, New York City, São Paulo and Sydney, CPPIB is governed and managed independently of the Canada Pension Plan and at arm's length from governments. At June 30, 2018, the CPP Fund totalled C$366.6 billion. For more information about CPPIB, please visit www.cppib.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.
About the Creative Destruction Lab
The Creative Destruction Lab is a seed-stage program for massively scalable, science-based companies. Its nine-month program pairs founders with experienced entrepreneurs and investors to set focused, measurable objectives with the goal of maximizing equity-value creation. Founded in 2012 by Professor Ajay Agrawal at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, the program has now expanded with locations in Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, Halifax, and New York City.
Since its inception in 2012, companies that have participated in the CDL programs have created over $3.1 billion (CAD) in equity value. CDL Alumni include Thalmic Labs (Waterloo), Atomwise (San Francisco), Deep Genomics (Toronto), Automat (Montreal), Kyndi (Palo Alto), and Heuritech (Paris).
For more information, contact:
CPPIB
Darryl Konynenbelt
Director, Global Media Relations
T: +1 416 972 8389
dkonynenbelt@cppib.com
Creative Destruction Lab
James Liu
Marketing Lead
Creative Destruction Lab
james.liu@creativedestructionlab.com