In this episode of the Sunny Ray Show, host Sunny Ray sits down with Emanuel, founder of Future Wave, a Swiss based emerging asset manager focused on smart infrastructure and value creation for growth stage companies. Emanuel traces his path from Ticino to Zurich, through public policy studies in Lausanne and a formative stint at Credit Suisse, into private equity growth capital and eventually into building his own venture. He discusses why he moved from advising deals to deploying capital, how early exposure to impact investing and the SDGs shaped his thinking, and why he now favors infrastructure businesses with strong balance sheets over pure impact plays. The conversation covers Future Wave's structured hundred million euro pipeline across the EU and a new joint venture fund in Saudi Arabia focused on agri technology and water, the overlap between AI, data centers and infrastructure investing, and the hardest lessons he has learned about raising capital. Emanuel closes by sharing his long term vision for Future Wave and where listeners can connect with the firm.
A Swiss fund builder on turning infrastructure, AI, and Saudi capital into a hundred million euro growth thesis.
Can you share a bit about Future Wave and what you're working on?
Future Wave is about three years old now. It was born from the idea of changing how private equity growth capital was done, so we engineered a new model. We're an emerging asset manager operating across a few jurisdictions, and our core focus is value creation for infrastructure projects and technologies.
What pulled you toward public management and policy instead of finance or business at university?
There's already overlap with infrastructure projects because there's overlap with the public sector. The program in Lausanne gave me a lot of knowledge and analytical skills that blossomed later in my first job at a bank, which was Credit Suisse. That's where I later took my CFA internally and where the finance side really matured.
What was your first real job and what did it teach you that no degree could?
I was essentially advising, and funny enough I was advising on divesting rather than investing. That was during my Credit Suisse time and it was very strong for me, I learned a lot. After that I went directly into PE growth, starting at post incubation stage and moving into growth capital before starting Future Wave.
Was there a deal or moment when you flipped from advisor to principal, from analyzing capital to deploying it?
The tipping point was realizing I couldn't do entirely what I wanted, there was always politics around it. I took some time in solitude and came up with my business plan. It was good enough that other people, who are now my partners, believed in it and helped co-shape the venture.
Impact investing has a credibility problem, a lot of it is theater. When did you realize smart infrastructure was different and that you could actually price the impact?
I remember 2017 at my first Davos, when SDG literacy was very low. From then until 2019 we did a lot of business in Africa and plastic recycling. Now the space feels inflated because many funds couldn't deliver financial returns, half their time went into reporting. Today you can still do good while staying in a solid tech or infrastructure play.
Future Wave structured a hundred million euro pipeline across the EU and a second fund in Saudi Arabia. Why those geographies and why now?
We like businesses without political dependencies that benefit from a positive regulatory environment, so public affairs is core to what we do. In Saudi Arabia we're establishing a local joint venture and promoting an independent fund around agri technology and water, tied to the kingdom's 2030 agenda. In Europe we operate through Liechtenstein and soon Malta, focused on infrastructure businesses with strong balance sheets.
Where do you see the biggest mispricing in smart infrastructure today, what's hiding in plain sight?
There are a lot of inflated companies out there, especially standalone tech. Two macro trends we can't avoid are AI and aging legacy infrastructure. We're not necessarily the right player for the early AI niche play, so we want an additional layer of security that comes from a strong balance sheet, which often brings governmental support and more secure inflows.
What's the hardest lesson you've learned about raising capital that nobody teaches you in business school?
It's the hardest job to do. It's not just who you are, what you did, or the quality of the deal, there's an entire follow up process required. Some people want advisors to work purely on commission, but there's so much more work involved than that. Raising capital is genuinely tougher than sourcing deals.
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