Building the entrepreneurial capability that sovereign technology requires.
I4E is the applied-research and venture-development institute of TWIXIS Ventures. We work with government research programmes, universities, and corporations to prepare the founders, researchers and institutions who will decide who controls data, infrastructure, and intelligence over the next decade.
Sovereignty begins with capability, not policy.
Across government, industry and academia, the conversation about technological sovereignty usually starts with policy — regulation, procurement rules, national strategy. I4E starts a step earlier, with capability. Someone has to be trained, funded, and supported to actually build the systems a sovereignty strategy calls for. That is the work of an entrepreneurship institute embedded inside a working venture studio and engineering practice — not a lecture series and not a slide deck.
A delivery partner for innovation mandates
We translate funded research into deployable capability — with the academic rigor a mandate requires and the commercial discipline a deployment requires.
A structured route into emerging technology
Agentic AI, Web3 infrastructure, post-quantum security — accessed through a working build partner, without the risk of growing an internal capability from zero.
A bridge from research to deployment
Publishable research with a route to a working platform — co-designed with an academic partner, built by an engineering partner already wired in.
Applied research, with a global academic network
I4E partners with academic institutions to give researchers, doctoral candidates and entrepreneurial leaders direct exposure to how emerging technology is actually funded and built — not a simulation of it. Programmes are co-designed with our academic partners and tested against a real build pipeline, so research questions can move toward a working platform rather than stopping at publication. For institutional clients, that is applied research with a global bench: Swiss rigour, Asian markets, Latin-American reach and Cambridge authority available to a single programme.
HEG-FR — Haute École de Gestion Fribourg, Switzerland
Academic anchor of the 3ATLAS consortium: six-monthly independent research into the Swiss 3rd-pillar pension market, translated by I4E and Consekense into the first independent fund-comparison platform in the country. See the case study →
Grenoble Ecole de Management — Grenoble, France
Academic partner on the StartupHome live business case: MSc Innovation, Strategy & Entrepreneurship students worked alongside I4E to benchmark global tech hubs and build the market and financial case for scaling co-living worldwide. See the case study →
A wider academic and institutional network
Beyond its anchor partnership with HEG-FR, I4E works across a network of universities, research centres and executive-education institutions — from Cambridge to Vienna — carrying its data-sovereignty perspective into finance, policy and, increasingly, the life sciences.
Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance — Cambridge Judge Business School
I4E's founder has contributed to research at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF), University of Cambridge — the centre behind the CCAF.io platform, the Cambridge FinTech Ecosystem Atlas, the Alternative Finance Benchmarks and the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index. The work informs evidence-based thinking on digital assets, regulatory frameworks and fintech-ecosystem development for institutions and policymakers. Explore CCAF.io →
Møller Institute — Churchill College, University of Cambridge
Through the Møller Institute — the leadership-development institute at Churchill College, Cambridge — I4E has delivered executive-education sessions on fintech innovation, corporate innovation and the London technology ecosystem to senior leaders from Asia and China, combined with immersion at Level39. Delegations have connected I4E with major Asian financial institutions and networks, including the Agricultural Bank of China, the Bank of Suzhou, ICBC and the Asia Financial Cooperation Association (AFCA). About the Møller Institute →
European Academy of Neurology — Brain Health Mission
I4E's founder, Nicolas Steiner, speaks at the European Academy of Neurology's Public Brain Health Day 2026, part of the EAN Brain Health Mission. The contribution carries I4E's central question — who controls data, capital and the intelligence behind decisions — into the life sciences, where personal-data sovereignty and data intelligence are becoming decisive for brain health and neurology. EAN Brain Health Mission →
- Tailored research mandates and doctoral collaboration, with a route from academic insight to a build pipeline
- Fintech, AI, and Web3 immersion programmes across our global hub network — including direct access to Level39, Canary Wharf's fintech innovation hub
- Executive education for innovation, R&D, and digital-transformation teams inside corporations and public institutions
- Custom courses in innovation, entrepreneurship and emerging-technology policy for postgraduate and executive audiences
A working prototyping environment, not a workshop.
The I4E Lab is run by Consekense, the engineering practice of TWIXIS Ventures — a software house that designs for institutional and commercial outcomes, not just clean code. This is the structured, evidence-led environment where research and policy questions are tested against a real build, and either survive contact with a market and a regulator, or are retired quickly and cheaply.
Agentic AI & sovereign intelligence
AI systems that operate on an institution's own data, within its own infrastructure — auditable, explainable, and not dependent on a single external platform.
Web3, tokenisation & digital infrastructure
Smart contracts, tokenised asset platforms, and decentralised infrastructure — introduced as modular extensions when the business or policy case justifies it.
Security, identity & post-quantum architecture
Digital identity, API governance and cryptographic resilience, designed against the coming expiry of today's encryption standards.
Principles only matter when they survive a real deadline.
A selection of engagements spanning asset management, sport, telecommunications, banking, insurance and critical infrastructure — from board-level strategy through to production platforms. Each is documented with its outcome, because an institutional partner should be able to verify a track record rather than take a claim on faith. Further client work is available under NDA on request.
Manulife — Real-World Asset Tokenisation Strategy
The challenge
Manulife's asset management division faced a narrow window to establish a position in real-world asset (RWA) tokenisation — converting ownership of traditionally illiquid assets such as private equity, real estate and natural capital into blockchain-based, fractional, tradable tokens. The strategic question was where to start: which asset, which regulator, which product and which client segment — without disrupting the core business.
What was delivered
- A five-point strategy to position Manulife's asset management division at the forefront of RWA tokenisation, aligned with the Manulife strategy team
- A defined starting point: timber and natural capital as the asset, MAS (Singapore) as the regulatory anchor, tokenised debt as the product, and the semi-institutional segment as distribution
- A phased "blockchain-native" product roadmap reaching beyond simply tokenising existing offerings, including impact-focused profiles
- A "speedboat" operating model to accelerate the strategy without disrupting core operations
Outcomes
- A differentiated proposition anchored in a natural-capital asset class where Manulife holds a genuine competitive advantage
- A 12–18-month window-of-opportunity thesis, with a clear first-mover rationale and the cost of inaction made explicit
- Real-world assets positioned as on-chain collateral for further tokenised products
- A regulator-led, phased route designed to de-risk entry into a maturing market
EWRC — Elite Women Rugby Community
The challenge
EWRC needed a platform capable of supporting an investor fundraise — commercially credible and technically rigorous before a single paying user existed.
What was delivered
- Live and on-demand video platform with rights enforcement
- Sports-data ingestion, normalisation and matching engine
- AI-powered insights, statistics and prediction APIs
Outcomes
- Web3-compliant architecture preserving tokenisation optionality
- Proprietary data model — no provider owns the underlying asset
- Platform used directly to support a successful fundraising round
GDFA × F4B — Open-Source Biodiversity Data Platform
The challenge
Seventy per cent of investors cite a lack of usable data as the principal barrier to financing biodiversity. The deeper problem is not a shortage of biodiversity data, but that corporate asset location and ownership data is not structured to be combined with it — so biodiversity risk cannot enter the risk, valuation and disclosure models of financial institutions without prohibitive transaction costs. Asset geolocation is the missing link.
What was delivered
- A technical scoping paper and high-level platform design, produced through a three-month, 44-institution design sprint spanning asset managers, asset owners and ESG data providers — including the World Bank, Bank of England, HSBC, JP Morgan AM, Moody's, the University of Oxford, IUCN and WWF
- A decentralised data-exchange architecture: corporates retain custody of sensitive geolocation data and share it through APIs, with privacy-enhancing technology ensuring only an authorised requester can see it
- An open-source core — source code, data standards, taxonomy and governance charter published openly for auditability — combined with full data-localisation compliance
- A platform data taxonomy (asset, geolocation, ownership) linked to financial instruments via ISIN/FIGI codes, a three-layer governance stack, a tiered membership-and-royalty revenue model, and a four-phase build roadmap
Outcomes
- A sovereignty-preserving design — data never leaves the contributor's own servers, is never centralised, and is never disclosed to competitors
- A pre-competitive, open-source public good mapped to TNFD and SFDR, aligned with the UNPRI, UNEP and Finance for Biodiversity Pledge agenda
- Community validation to proceed to a proof-of-concept build — confirming genuine institutional demand rather than a supply-driven platform
- A route to translate biodiversity risk into decision-ready capital-markets data, "akin to the net-zero movement on climate"
Vodafone — Digital Identity & Connected Services
The challenge
A telecom operator holds deep identity, authentication and billing relationships with its customers — yet that value is increasingly captured by the over-the-top platforms running on top of the network. The question is how to expose those capabilities as open, partner-accessible services while keeping the customer relationship, and the underlying data, under the operator's own control.
What was delivered
- Open-API service concepts exposing operator identity, authentication and billing to a partner ecosystem
- Digital-identity patterns built on the operator's existing, regulated customer trust relationship
- Concept-to-prototype work in the I4E Lab, tested against real partner and commercial scenarios
Outcomes
- Capabilities framed around operator-owned identity and data, not platform dependency
- API-first patterns opening new partner and revenue surfaces
- A repeatable model for turning network assets into embedded, third-party-accessible services
ENOVO — Cyber Resilience for Energy Infrastructure
The challenge
ENOVO operates across substations, hydro plants and dispatch centres, where security telemetry is highly sensitive and cloud-dependent AI is not an option. They required an AI layer running entirely within their own perimeter, trained on their own operational data.
What was delivered
- Market assessment and selection of the optimal open-source LLM for the use case
- On-premise infrastructure blueprint and GPU environment specification
- Model trained on ENOVO's proprietary telemetry and cybersecurity dataset
- Natural-language reporting engine for plain-language incident queries
Outcomes
- AI running entirely within ENOVO's own perimeter — zero cloud-AI dependency
- Proprietary training dataset no external provider can replicate
- Provider-agnostic model architecture, swappable without core rework
- Deployable on-premise across any client jurisdiction
Prudential — PRU Fintegrate & Customer Policy Management
The challenge
Prudential Singapore — close to one million customers, five million policies and 4,800 financial consultants — wanted to re-imagine how customers understand and manage their policies, and to connect the business to the FinTech, InsurTech, HealthTech and MedTech ecosystem through a multi-year digital-transformation programme: PRU Fintegrate.
What was delivered
- I4E as Innovation Partner for the PRU Fintegrate Partnership Programme, connecting Prudential to scale-ups across FinTech, InsurTech, HealthTech and MedTech
- A Customer Policy Management App, conceived and jointly refined with Prudential, giving customers a clear view of policy, coverage and payments
- An API layer defined and developed for integration with Prudential's internal systems and third-party applications
- A working solution concept showcased at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2018
Outcomes
- An easy-to-use app for customers to understand their policy and payments with Prudential
- Customer control over personal and family ("associated profile") data and third-party data sharing
- A channel for Prudential to respond to customers' changing life circumstances over time
Bank of America — Corporate Solution MVP
The challenge
A corporate banking team needed to validate a new solution concept quickly — proving both the technical approach and the business case before committing to a full build.
What was delivered
- A cutting-edge MVP for a corporate banking solution, delivered in an agile, fail-fast model
- Technical depth and commercial judgment applied in parallel, so the prototype tested the business case, not only the technology
- A working proof point the team could take forward internally
Outcomes
- A validated solution concept, built fast and lean
- Exactly the combination of technical depth and business thinking the engagement called for
StartupHome — Co-Living for Entrepreneurs and Freelancers
The challenge
StartupHome runs co-living houses in London for a globally mobile generation of entrepreneurs, freelancers and professionals — members drawn from over 20 countries who rent rather than buy in order to stay free to relocate. The question was how to take a proven London pilot and build the market, financial and partnership case for scaling the model across the world's leading tech hubs.
What was delivered
- A benchmark of the top ten global tech-hub locations, assessed on regulation, target-audience behaviour and local-market fit
- A location-by-location business case built on regional price-versus-income, operational cost and community-management economics
- A decision tool modelling the sub-let-versus-buy trade-off, and the income ratio between rent, sponsorship and grants per city
- A sponsorship and partnership map — corporations, embassies, universities and accelerators — feeding the co-living community and its product-testing programme
Outcomes
- A pilot validated over 18 months — around 200 tenants from 42 nationalities, with startups and new ventures born inside the houses
- A repeatable, evidence-based playbook for entering new cities rather than a single-market anecdote
- A community engine attractive to corporate partners, from embassies to tech accelerators, as a natural product-testing and talent channel
- A structured route to market for a co-living brand positioned as "WeWork for beds"
3ATLAS — Swiss Pension Fund Comparison Platform
The challenge
The Swiss 3a pension market had 92 products across 28 vendors and no standardised way to compare risk, return or cost — a CHF 150bn market operating with near-zero transparency, with no equivalent service in Switzerland or internationally.
What was delivered
- Cloud platform with an API layer serving scientific pension-fund comparison data
- Risk-profiling engine personalising fund recommendations by investor profile
- Multi-year ROI projection and canton-level tax-savings calculator
- B2B2C architecture licensable to banks, advisors and media platforms
Outcomes
- Scientific IP owned by the research consortium, not by any fund provider
- First independent comparison platform in Switzerland — no prior domestic or international equivalent
- Independent from incumbents — data reflects performance, not provider interest
- Infrastructure built for cross-market B2B licensing
The people accountable for the work above.
An institutional partnership is, in practice, a relationship with specific people. Here is who you would be working with.
Nicolas Steiner
Founder of TWIXIS Ventures. 25+ years across Fintech, Telecom and Asset Management; founding member of Level39; former tech strategy lead, EMEA & APAC at Invesco.
Paul Loeffler
Managing Partner, I4E — Institute for Entrepreneurship.
Alexandru Iosef
Co-founder & CEO, Consekense. 25+ years across telecom and finance, API ecosystems, and decentralised architecture.
François Gardin
Lucie Erzgraeber
Nicolas Dupuis
Peter Henry
One ecosystem, eleven hubs.
Through I4E, a government programme, university, or corporate partner does not gain an introduction — it gains a counterpart already embedded in the same investment, engineering and regulatory network TWIXIS Ventures uses to advise, build and invest, across eleven hub cities.
Start with a conversation, not a proposal.
Tell us which kind of institution you represent and what you are trying to deliver — a research mandate, a partnership MOU, a pilot programme, or a sponsored build. We will respond with the right person on our side, not a generic reply.
For government research programmes: we can scope a delivery partnership against an existing innovation mandate or funding instrument.
For corporations: we can scope a sponsored build, a secondment into The Lab, or an executive education engagement.
For universities & innovation ecosystems: we can discuss a research mandate, a doctoral collaboration, or a joint programme on the model of HEG-FR / 3ATLAS.
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