KfW Capital Award 2025: The prizes for Best Female Investor, Best Impact Investor and VC Game Changer have been presented!

• Best Female Investor: Dr Carolin Gabor
• Best Impact Investor: Miki Yokoyama with Aurum Impact
• Special award VC Game Changer: Prof Dr Helmut Schönenberger
• Each prize has a purse of EUR 5,000

The winners of the KfW Capital Award 2025 have been selected: Dr Carolin Gabor, Managing Partner of the early-stage fund caesar., was crowned Best Female Investor 2025, and Miki Yokoyama, founding partner of the Aurum Impact family office, was chosen as Best Impact Investor 2025. This year’s special prize ‘VC Game Changer 2025’ went to Prof Dr Helmut Schönenberger, CEO of UnternehmerTUM and Vice President Entrepreneurship at Munich Technical University. All winners were announced during the award presentation ceremony at the event location ‘Bar Jeder Vernunft’ in Berlin yesterday evening.

Nominees could either self-nominate or be nominated for the KfW Capital Award. The two juries of venture capital experts (see below) had selected the winners from all applications in a multi-stage selection procedure. The awards carry a prize money of 5,000 euros each. The KfW Capital Award was presented for the fourth time this year, again complementing them with the KfW Entrepreneurs’ Award, which has honoured successful business founders for almost three decades, representing the perspective of investors.

"By selecting Dr Carolin Gabor, Miki Yokoyama and Prof Dr Helmut Schönenberger, the juries have selected outstanding candidates as winners. The latter won this year’s special prize 'VC Game Changer', which for the first time honoured a personality who has taken the further development of the VC ecosystem forward with his deep personal commitment, vision and values. If Helmut Schönenberger did not exist, he would have to be invented for the VC ecosystem",

said Dr Jörg Goschin, CEO of KfW Capital.

"As a successful investor, Dr Carolin Gabor, the winner in the category Best Female Investor, is an important role model in the VC market – particularly for young talents. We need to have the brightest minds for a strong VC ecosystem in the future as well."

"The award for Best Impact Investor underscores the high strategic importance of venture capital investors who are not just pursuing financial returns but want to achieve measurable positive societal and ecological impacts. By honouring Miki Yokoyama, this time we have the special situation that we are honouring an investor who conducts impact investing deliberately from a family office, which is still quite rare in Germany,"

said Alexander Thees, Member of the Management Board of KfW Capital.

How the juries justified their selections:

Best Female Investor 2025: Dr Carolin Gabor (caesar.)

Dr Carolin Gabor is a versatile and successful expert in the venture capital ecosystem. She began her career as a consultant at BCG. She then switched sides to the start-up level, taking positions as CEO at TopTarif.de and autohaus24.de. Both companies were successfully sold under her direction. She then held various roles as an investor before founding the early-stage fund caesar. in May 2023, where she has since been the Managing Partner. Her career history is characterised by outstanding analytical skills and a good feel for promising innovations with which she successfully advances digital business models. As a female leader, she is now setting standards by demonstrating how leadership, technical competence and entrepreneurial action can work together to make the financial and insurance industry more sustainable and user-friendly in the future. Holder of a PhD from the RWTH Aachen University, she is not only a successful investor but very active across the VC ecosystem. Among other roles, she has been a member of the German FinTechRat advisory council at the German Federal Ministry of Finance since 2019.

Best Impact Investor 2025: Miki Yokoyama (Aurum Impact)

Since 2023, Miki Yokoyama has been systematically developing the investment company Aurum Impact of the GOLDBECK Group as a founding partner into a forward-looking impact investor. Aurum Impact makes targeted investments in enterprises and funds that create measurable social and ecological added value while also mobilising private capital for this area.

In doing so, Aurum Impact sets new standards for responsible capital investment in the VC ecosystem in which impact investing is systematically designed and implemented from the perspective of an entrepreneurial family office. Particularly worthy of emphasis is its focus on impact-oriented business models seeking change in the areas of climate action, circular economy and social participation. Miki Yokoyama herself can look back on many years of investment expertise – having held roles at, among others, UVC, TechFounders and AENU. In addition, she is active in the Circular Economy Initiative of the Federation of German Industries, at 2hearts and in other networks, mentoring programmes and impact initiatives.

VC Game Changer 2025: Prof Dr Helmut Schönenberger (UnternehmerTUM)

With his visionary leadership and integrative approach, Prof Dr Helmut Schönenberger has had a lasting impact on the innovation landscape in Germany and Europe. As the CEO of UnternehmerTUM and Vice President Entrepreneurship at Munich Technical University, he has established Europe's largest centre for innovation and business creation, which successfully connects academia with industry and capital providers. Under his leadership, deep tech and AI start-ups have been equipped with more than two billion US dollars in venture capital, making Munich one of Europe's leading locations for innovation. His comprehensive venture capital model enables capital to be allocated efficiently across all financing stages. He also promotes European networking and the global scaling of start-ups and advocates for sustainable innovation. Prof Dr Helmut Schönenberger embodies the values he promotes: entrepreneurial courage, a long-term vision and innovation that benefits the common good. As professor and Vice President Entrepreneurship at Munich Technical University, he has institutionalised the ‘knowledge triangle’ of education, research and entrepreneurship, creating a unique bond between academic excellence and practical entrepreneurship.

Further information on the KfW Capital Award 2025 can be found at KfW Capital Award 2025.

Further information on the KfW Entrepreneurship Award 2025 can be found here: KfW Entrepreneurship Award

Note:

The jurors for the KfW Capital Award for ‘Best Female Investor’ were: Dr Tanja Emmerling (Partner HTGF), Ulrike Hinrichs (member of the Executive Board of the German Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVK), Prof Dr Heike Hölzner (Professor at the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin and co-founder of encourageventures e.V.) and Dr Eva Wimmer (Head of the Directorate-General for Financial Market Policy at the Federal Ministry of Finance). The jury for the category ‘Best Impact Investor’ was: Dr Janina Jänsch (Head of the SME Department at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy), Verena Kempe (Head of Investment Management at KENFO), Felix Oldenburg (CEO of project bcause and Board Spokesman of gut.org gAG) and Dr Bryan Scheler (Vice President Solutions, Investments & Partnerships BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt). For KfW Capital, Dr Jörg Goschin was a juror for the category of ‘Best Female Investor’ and Alexander Thees for ‘Best Impact Investor’, while Theresa Bardubitzki was on both juries.