Marc Leduc

Marc Leduc is an Investment Manager at BASF Venture Capital, the corporate venture capital arm of chemical giant BASF SE, a role he has held since February 2017. Born in Canada and fluent in English, French and German, he has spent essentially his entire career inside BASF, joining the company in 1999. He brings more than 25 years of industrial experience in chemicals to his investing work.

His path to venture is unusually operational. He began at BASF in polymer research, then moved through a series of positions in product development and marketing — designing products for market demand and scaling them from the laboratory to full production. Before joining the venture team he served as a Senior Manager in the incubation unit of BASF New Business GmbH, where he developed new growth areas for the BASF Group. That combination of R&D, commercial and new-business experience is what he leans on when evaluating and supporting early-stage chemistry and materials companies.

On the academic side, Leduc studied chemistry at Cornell University and earned a Ph.D. in polymer chemistry there, followed by post-doctoral research at ETH Zurich. He later completed an MBA / Executive MBA at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford (2008), giving him a technical-plus-business grounding that maps directly to BASF Venture Capital's deep-tech mandate.

Beyond deal-making, Leduc is active in the cleantech ecosystem — he has served as a juror for the Nordic Cleantech Open (via Cleantech Scandinavia) and speaks at industry events such as Rethinking Materials 2026. His stated ethos is collaborative: he emphasizes "working every day with outstanding founders" and striving "to generate value that goes beyond capital."

• Invests through BASF Venture Capital's ~€250 million evergreen corporate fund, writing roughly €1–5 million minority-stake checks.
• Backs companies from seed to Series B, typically "after technological and market proof of concept has been established" — i.e., real technology and early market signal, not just an idea.
• Concentrates on "fields that shape the future: CO₂ reduction, the circular economy, new materials, biotechnology, as well as artificial intelligence and software solutions."
• Given his polymer-chemistry background, he is a natural lead on materials, recycling and sustainable-chemistry deals (e.g., DePoly, Lactips).
• The pitch is strategic value, not just money: the firm offers "deep industry expertise, access to international markets, and connections to BASF's global network" — a founder should expect the BASF relationship (customers, scale-up, technical validation) to be part of the deal.
• In his own words, the goal is to "generate value that goes beyond capital" by "working every day with outstanding founders."