Blue Ocean Fund
Blue Ocean is SWEN Capital Partners' ocean-impact venture capital fund, based in Paris and run in scientific partnership with France's Ifremer marine institute. The fund backs early-stage startups tackling overfishing, ocean pollution, and climate change. As of June 2025, SWEN Blue Ocean's second fund reached a 160 million euro first close, ranking it among the world's largest ocean-impact venture funds.
Compiled by Antoine Walter, (don't) Waste Water, from official filings and direct intelligence in Leviathan.
The take
Blue Ocean is the rare venture fund that hired marine scientists before it wrote a cheque. SWEN Capital Partners, a roughly 16 billion euro Paris asset manager better known for private equity and infrastructure, launched the strategy in 2021 in scientific partnership with Ifremer, France's national ocean-research institute, so that biologists vet the science behind every deal. The thesis is narrow on purpose: back startups that regenerate ocean health while still targeting market-rate returns, organised around the three forces wrecking marine biodiversity, namely overfishing, pollution, and climate change.
Blue Ocean's bets sit where the ocean meets the rest of the economy. In (don't) Waste Water's tracking, the fund has backed three companies across three deals: Tidal Vision, which turns shellfish-processing waste into a chitosan biomaterial that replaces toxic industrial chemicals; Oneka Technologies, whose buoys desalinate seawater using nothing but wave motion; and MiAlgae, which grows omega-3-rich microalgae on whisky-distillery leftovers to take pressure off wild forage fish. Each is a bet on a different ocean threat, pollution, clean water, and overfishing, rather than a single sub-sector.
Blue Ocean is run from Paris by co-managing directors Christian Lim and Olivier Raybaud, who built the strategy together in 2021. Lim came from impact and development finance and co-chairs the World Economic Forum-backed 1000 Ocean Startups coalition; Raybaud spent two decades in banking, including five years in China, before turning to ocean impact. As of June 2025, their second fund, SWEN Blue Ocean 2, reached a 160 million euro first close on the way to a 300 million euro target, backed by the European Investment Fund and France 2030, after the debut fund closed at 170 million euro.
Blue Ocean is, worth remembering, only one strategy inside a much larger SWEN, whose other arms back the energy transition; the SWEN voice on this podcast so far is principal Alena Fargere, on the firm's hydrogen and renewable-gas investing rather than its ocean work. For the ocean fund itself, the direction is scale: a bigger second fund, a global rather than European footprint, and a widening of what counts as an ocean company, from aquaculture and alternative seafood to shipping decarbonisation and the data tools that measure marine impact.
On the show
Water Commitment Score
Compiled from official filings, third-party records, and direct intelligence from investors and founders, in Leviathan · recomputed monthly · as of Jun 2026.
How they invest
Portfolio · 3 water companies
Invests alongside
Highlighted = profiled on (don't) Waste Water.
Frequently asked
- What does Blue Ocean invest in?
- Blue Ocean backs early-stage startups that regenerate ocean health, targeting overfishing, pollution, and climate change. Its portfolio spans sustainable aquaculture, alternative seafood, ocean cleanup, biomaterials, wave-powered desalination, and shipping decarbonisation. SWEN runs the fund in scientific partnership with Ifremer, France's national marine-research institute, and classifies it as an Article 9 fund, the European Union's strictest sustainability tier.
- Who runs SWEN Blue Ocean?
- SWEN Blue Ocean is led by co-managing directors Christian Lim and Olivier Raybaud, who launched the strategy in 2021. Lim co-chairs the World Economic Forum-backed 1000 Ocean Startups coalition; Raybaud spent twenty years in banking. The Paris investment team includes Mélanie Le Guen, Laëtitia Gombaud-Saintonge, and Clémence Ollivier.
- How big is the SWEN Blue Ocean fund?
- Blue Ocean's debut fund closed at 170 million euro in 2021. As of June 2025, its successor, SWEN Blue Ocean 2, reached a 160 million euro first close on the way to a 300 million euro target, backed by the European Investment Fund and France 2030. That ranks it among the world's largest ocean-impact venture funds.
- How many water companies has Blue Ocean backed?
- In (don't) Waste Water's tracking, Blue Ocean has backed three water companies across three deals: Tidal Vision, which makes biomaterials from shellfish waste; Oneka Technologies, a wave-powered desalination company; and MiAlgae, which grows microalgae feed. (don't) Waste Water rates the fund's water commitment Committed.
- Is Blue Ocean Fund the same as SWEN Capital Partners?
- Blue Ocean is the ocean-impact venture strategy inside SWEN Capital Partners, a roughly 16 billion euro Paris asset manager owned by Ofi Invest and the Aéma Group. SWEN's other strategies cover private equity, infrastructure, private debt, and the energy transition. Blue Ocean is its dedicated marine-biodiversity arm, sometimes called SWEN Blue Ocean, not a separate firm.