The mandate Mandalore Partners runs today for Apicil, and the one Minh Q. Tran ran at AXA France from 2013.
A corporate venture mandate designed, structured and operated end to end.
I led AXA Seed Factory at AXA France, from June 2013. Mandalore Partners has never operated this fund — the track record is mine, personally.
Minh Q. Tran, founder of Mandalore PartnersAXA France launched AXA Seed Factory in June 2013 as a seed fund dedicated to insurance and banking technology. A dedicated legal vehicle, a single corporate shareholder, its own governance, a quarterly valuation committee: the dedicated-compartment model Mandalore operates today, in an earlier form.
The mandate covered the entire chain: thesis definition, sourcing, due diligence, structuring, a board seat, operational support, then exit. On several holdings it went further than investing: AXA Seed Factory created companies around the group's own business assets.
Exited
Launched in February 2015, ClimateSecure was created by AXA Seed Factory with Climpact-Metnext and AXA Corporate Solutions. The principle: parametric insurance indexed on weather readings and satellite imagery, covering companies exposed to climate anomalies. Underwriting capacity from the corporate, weather expertise from a partner, a new company to carry the offer.
Climpact-Metnext was acquired by Weathernews Inc. in January 2017.
Exited
Founded in Montpellier in 2004, Netheos builds a platform for remote identity verification, document checking and electronic signature, for regulated industries: banking, insurance, fintech, real estate.
In November 2021, Namirial, the digital trust platform owned by European fund Ambienta, acquired Netheos. It was the first deal in Namirial's international M&A strategy.
Exited
The fund's second investment, in October 2014. Particeep builds software that lets financial players create and run their own white-label funding and distribution solutions.
The thesis Minh Q. Tran held at the time: the disintermediation of early-stage funding was there to stay, and insurance had to position itself as infrastructure rather than as a spectator.
Exited
January 2015. AXA Seed Factory invested in Flyr, a San Francisco startup applying data science to forecasting and optimising the price of an airline ticket. The investment supported the opening of a European office.
The logic was not an aviation one, it was actuarial. Predicting a price from noisy time series is the same problem as pricing a risk.
Now FLYR Labs, the company is one of the world's references in airline revenue management.
Exited
Huma is a British digital health company whose platform applies AI to remote care and patient monitoring: digital-first care pathways for health systems, companion apps for patients under treatment, and decentralised clinical trials.
The holding has since been sold.
A single corporate LP. A dedicated vehicle. A team that sources, structures, sits on the board and exits. Companies created with the group's assets when the market had no right target to offer. Exits to industrial acquirers.
It is the model Mandalore Partners operates today, with one compartment per corporate LP.
Public sources: AXA France press release (June 2013), FinSMEs, Artemis.bm, Atlas Magazine, Maddyness, Rude Baguette, Namirial, Tech.eu. Compiled 24 August 2026.
A corporate venture fund, at group scale.
I was Managing Director of AXA Strategic Ventures, launched by the AXA Group in February 2015. Mandalore Partners has never operated this fund — the track record is mine, personally.
Minh Q. Tran, founder of Mandalore PartnersIn February 2015 the AXA Group launched AXA Strategic Ventures, a EUR 200M venture capital fund dedicated to emerging strategic innovations in financial services. Against the seed vehicle that preceded it, the change is one of scale: offices across three continents, seed and growth tickets alike, and vehicles later opened to third-party institutional investors.
The vehicle then unfolded into three fund families — early stage, growth, and fund of funds — USD 500M in total. The fund of funds alone was given an allocation of EUR 150M.
Evercontact, born in Paris, automates the extraction and enrichment of contact data from emails, with CRM synchronisation. In August 2016 the company was acquired by the American One More Company, with AXA Strategic Ventures taking part in the deal at the acquirer level.
Two AXA vehicles two years apart, the same hand: a seed fund inside AXA France, then a group-scale fund with offices on three continents. That trajectory — from first cheque to several hundred million under management — is what a corporate buys when it hands over a mandate.
Public sources: AXA press release, 9 April 2015 (EUR 200M fund, first investment of USD 1M in Evercontact); CFNEWS, fund of funds of EUR 150M. The USD 500M total across the three funds is stated by Minh Q. Tran, who ran the vehicle, and is not carried by a public source. Compiled 27 August 2026.
Mandalore Partners operates this mandate for the Apicil group, through the Insurtech Capital vehicle.
Apicil / Insurtech Capital
Apicil entrusted Mandalore Partners with operating its venture exposure to insurance and financial services technology, through the Insurtech Capital vehicle: structuring, sourcing, investment execution and reporting, under the group's governance.
Tell us what you want to build. We'll tell you how we'd operate it.
A first call is 30 minutes: your objective, the constraints you are working under, and whether an operated venture platform is the right instrument at all.
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