Calao Finance

Calao Finance is one of the rare French private equity houses that decided water was worth a thesis of its own. Since 2018 the firm has organised its water bets around the full water cycle, the whole loop of collecting, treating and recycling domestic wastewater, plus the software and data that let you actually control how much gets used. Water, for Calao Finance, is a resource problem you invest across end to end, not a single niche you dip into.

Calao Finance was founded in Paris in 2010 by Rodolphe Herbelin and Eric Gaillat, and it has spent more than a decade as an AMF-approved manager, the AMF being France's financial-markets regulator, running private equity funds for private, professional and institutional investors. Calao Finance is a generalist house with a water habit, a signatory of the UN Principles for Responsible Investment whose funds have, by its own count, helped finance more than a hundred French small and mid-sized companies.

Calao Finance shows up on my Leviathan radar through 2 water companies across 3 deals, from Seed to Series A, the early rounds where a startup is still proving its kit works. The pattern is industrial, infrastructure-grade water: AquaTech Innovation builds modular treatment systems for the awkward off-grid sites like campgrounds and marinas, and ACWA Robotics sends autonomous robots crawling through live, pressurised pipes to inspect a network without digging it up. Calao Finance leads about a third of the rounds it joins, which for a generalist fund is a real signal it will sit at the table rather than just ride along.

As of September 2024, Calao Finance no longer stands entirely on its own, having merged with Laillet Bordier - Acer Finance under the umbrella brand Acer Finance and folded its private equity track record into a larger wealth-management group spread across Paris, Bordeaux and Chartres. For a founder raising in water, Calao Finance reads as a patient, France-focused PE investor that backs the unglamorous plumbing of the water cycle, now operating inside a bigger house. If you are pitching an early-stage water-treatment or water-data company in France, this is a door worth knowing.