Connecting science, capital,
and strategy to shape a
resilient and competitive
future.
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About Activae

Activae is a strategic advisory firm that reduces risk and increases conviction in deeptech and technology-driven investments across high-impact, hard-to-abate industries. We support investors, early-stage ventures, corporates, and mission-driven organizations by developing robust investment theses, technology and market intelligence, and execution-oriented assessments grounded in science, societal challenges, unmet market needs, and industrial realities. By strengthening fundability, clarifying where technology can create real value, and guiding decisions beyond hype, Activae helps build resilience, competitiveness, and sustainable economic growth.

Innovation with Strategic Purpose

Activae translates state-of-the-art science and deeptech innovation into clear strategic insight for investors and organizations. We focus on identifying real, unmet market and societal needs, and on assessing how emerging technologies align with industrial feasibility, market demand, and policy realities. By moving beyond novelty and hype, we enable informed decisions that strengthen competitiveness, resilience, and long-term value creation.

Planet-Positive Growth

Activae takes a systems-level view of sustainability, grounded in planetary challenges such as climate, critical minerals, freshwater, circularity, land systems, and energy. We guide investments toward market opportunities where environmental performance, industrial competitiveness, and economic value reinforce each other. By identifying strategies and technologies that strengthen critical value chains, reduce dependency risks, and enhance resilience, we help investors and organizations pursue planet-positive growth that is profitable, scalable, and strategically robust.

Scalable Impact

Activae focuses on solutions that can scale across large, high-impact industries and perform under real-world conditions. We prioritize technologies and strategies that address critical needs, integrate into existing industrial systems, and strengthen strategic autonomy by reinforcing local and regional value chains. By guiding investments toward scalable and resilient pathways, we help ensure that environmental and societal impact is durable, economically viable, and robust in the face of regulatory, market, and geopolitical volatility.

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Our services

Activae: Guiding Investments for a Sustainable Tomorrow

Activae Insight - For mission-driven organizations

ACTIVAE Insight

For mission-driven organizations

ACTIVAE Insight supports mission-driven organizations—including foundations, public institutions, corporates, and ecosystem builders—in defining where and how technology can create meaningful impact. We develop robust investment theses, priority themes, and opportunity landscapes grounded in science, societal challenges, market dynamics, policy context, and industrial realities. Insight helps organizations move from ambition to clarity, identifying strategic spaces where capital, technology, and impact can align at scale.

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Activae Elevate - For investors and capital allocators

ACTIVAE Elevate

For investors and capital allocators

ACTIVAE Elevate helps investors increase conviction and reduce risk in deeptech and sustainability-driven investments. We provide rigorous technical and techno-economic due diligence, execution-oriented assessments, and portfolio-level intelligence across the investment lifecycle, covering technology readiness, market fit, policy alignment, scale-up risks, and industrial adoption pathways. Elevate is designed to support informed investment decisions, strengthen portfolio resilience, and enable long-term value creation in hard-to-abate industries.

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Activae Ignite - For early-stage ventures

ACTIVAE Ignite

For early-stage ventures

ACTIVAE Ignite supports early-stage ventures in increasing their probability of securing investment by translating strong technology into credible, investable strategies. We work with founders to sharpen their technical narrative, clarify market positioning, identify unmet needs, and align development and scale-up roadmaps with investor and industrial expectations. By strengthening fundability and execution readiness, Ignite helps promising technologies move from early development to successful capital raising and initial scale.

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Activae Launch - For everyone looking for a visual identity

ACTIVAE Launch

For everyone looking for a visual identity

We partner with visionary founders to define a clear, strategic brand vision and translate it into a coherent, compelling visual language. From strategy to execution, we craft and produce every element of your brand’s visual communication—logos, visual identities, websites, pitch decks, social media branding, animations, campaign visuals, and interactive/AR experiences—ensuring consistency, impact, and resonance across all touchpoints. With over 30 years of experience in design and branding, and deep expertise in sustainability and innovation, we help your startup not just stand out, but truly embody its purpose and ambition.

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3500
Assessed technologies
200
Global partners
5
Industrial sectors

Articles

ACTIVAE’s approach is driven by measurable outcomes and a focus on the shortest payback, ensuring that investments in our services deliver tangible value. Each of our case studies demonstrates how we helped ventures achieve market readiness, operational scalability, and competitive differentiation.

By identifying unique opportunities, such as repurposing agricultural waste or exploring adjacent markets, we enabled clients to accelerate time-to-market and maximize impact. With a clear path from insight to implementation, ACTIVAE’s services empower investors and portfolio companies to realize fast, sustainable returns on their investments, aligning business growth with long-term environmental objectives at the intersection of technology and capital.

Advanced Materials and Critical Minerals: The Supply Chains Powering the Energy Transition
Advanced Materials and Critical Minerals: The Supply Chains Powering the Energy Transition

Following the narrative developed throughout this energy series, we established that the energy transition extends beyond the deployment of new generation technologies. It also depends on materials, supply chains, and industrial capabilities. In the emerging energy system, access to materials…

From Technology Race to System Coordination: How Energy Innovation Organizes Around Clusters
From Technology Race to System Coordination: How Energy Innovation Organizes Around Clusters

For years, the energy transition was framed as a technological race: more efficient solar panels, larger wind turbines, better batteries, smarter grids. Innovation was assumed to be the primary bottleneck. Today, that assumption no longer holds.

From a global challenge to local bottlenecks
From a global challenge to local bottlenecks

As global energy demand continues to rise, energy infrastructure is being pushed to expand at faster than it can grow. At first glance, the challenge appears universal. Decarbonising supply and finding new energy sources, electrifying demand, and replacing fossil fuels…

Energy in a Changing Global System: Infrastructure, Materials, AI, and Innovation
Energy in a Changing Global System: Infrastructure, Materials, AI, and Innovation

The global energy system is undergoing a structural redesign, driven by physical, economic, and technological constraints.

Why do we do it?

We do this because we believe value is created when science and business scale together, by reducing risk for investors, strengthening fundability for founders, and ensuring that promising technologies can move from insight to impact.

1

Why Activae?

Because scaling high-impact technologies in hard-to-abate industries requires more than technical excellence, and after years of working across deeptech, industrial systems, and investment processes, Activae has seen where promising technologies stall: at the intersection of science, markets, capital, policy, and execution. We exist to bridge those gaps, reduce risk, and provide the clarity and conviction needed for founders, investors, and organizations to bring high-impact technologies to scale.

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Systems-Level Perspective

Systems-Level Perspective: Activae takes a systems-level approach to global challenges shaped by industrial transformation, resource constraints, and societal needs. We guide investments by connecting science with capital, markets, policy, and supply-chain realities, identifying opportunities where sustainable development, competitiveness, and economic value reinforce each other. This integrated perspective allows investors and organizations to act with clarity in complex, high-impact industrial contexts.

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Our drive

Activae is driven by the belief that science and technology, when connected to markets and capital with rigor, can turn today’s global challenges into tomorrow’s opportunities. After years working across deeptech, industry, and investment, we see this work as a responsibility to the next generation, and to help build a world that remains fair, competitive, and full of opportunity. We translate advanced science into strategic insight and reduce risk for decision-makers, we support solutions that strengthen resilience, enable sustainable development, and allow future generations to inherit at least the same opportunities we had.

Meet the team

Our team consists of skilled professionals driven by expertise, creativity, and a passion for delivering exceptional results and meaningful impact.

Diego Santamaria Razo

Diego Santamaria Razo Managing Director Activae Bridging science and emerging technologies with unmet market needs…

Diego Santamaria Razo

Managing Director Activae
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Maria Lozoya

Maria Lozoya Associate emerging technologies My background is in Environmental Design, and I recently completed…

Maria Lozoya

Associate emerging technologies
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Eduardo Pérez

Eduardo pérez Associate brand communication   I’m a visual artist and graphic communicator with postgraduate…

Eduardo Pérez

Associate brand communication
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Diego Santamaria Razo
Managing Director Activae
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Maria Lozoya
Associate emerging technologies
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Eduardo Pérez
Associate brand communication
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Testimonials

Marco Sangermano

Full Professor and Director of Incoming and Outgoing Internationalization activities at Politecnico di Torino

“Working with Diego is a real pleasure. He combines scientific creativity and contagious enthusiasm with remarkable originality and perseverance in turning ideas into reality. A rare and inspiring partner.”

Sano Norihiko

Partner and Associate Director at BCG

“Diego has an exceptional ability to connect complex technical and commercial dimensions. In our joint work for a major client, he combined deep understanding of materials science, manufacturing, and AI with strategic clarity, helping align multiple ecosystem players toward an innovative and implementable solution. His approach bridges technology, business, and execution in a way that truly accelerates impact.”

Yaku Partners

“At yaku Partners, we are thrilled to join forces with Diego and Activae as a prime partner in pioneering Deeptech ventures. Diego’s unmatched expertise—from hands-on scientific insight to industrial-scale innovation—perfectly embodies our vision of taking breakthrough technologies from Lab to Fab. Together, we are forging a powerful bridge between Latin America’s innovation potential and Europe’s industrial strength and global champions.“

Benjamin Zehr

CEO at Reciprocal

“Activae brings together deep technical knowhow and professionalism, alongside a human touch. Working with Diego and his team has been both effortless for Reciprocal. We have valued their clarity of thought, generosity, and commitment to maximizing their impact. While some technical consultants can get lost in minor details, Activae sees the forest and the trees. Skill and experience alongside clear communication and integrity – Activae has a winning combination.”

Silvia Gatti

COO at Benwtral

“From our very first meeting at HackSummit, I immediately knew we had to work with Diego. His unique mix of deep technical expertise, international vision, and above all his humanity, has been fundamental for us. Over the past year he has supported us with both technical and managerial consulting, always bringing the agility and creativity of a startup mindset combined with the structured perspective of a large corporate. Working with him and the Activae team has been an invaluable part of our journey.”

Riccardo Frezzato

CEO at BeNewtral

“Working with ACTIVAE has been a great experience. Diego and his team complemented our efforts with structure and strategic insight, especially in helping us refine our R&D roadmap, data room, and talent plans. Their combination of technical and business expertise helped us move forward with confidence.”

Benjamin Leavenworth

Partner at Afina

“Diego combines the skills of being a deep scientist, with a practical understanding of how to apply technology to solve problems and create opportunity while being able to communicate this in a language that capital and industry understands”

Justin Leavenworth

Owner of Recovr

“Activae provided us with invaluable insight on how to better adapt our technology and to find new market opportunities”

Antoine Gourevitch

Senior Managing Director Partner at BCG

“Diego brings a rare combination of strategic foresight and deep technical understanding. Through ACTIVAE, he helps organizations identify breakthrough opportunities at the intersection of science, manufacturing, and business competitiveness, precisely where the next wave of industrial transformation will happen.”

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