The Formula 1 champion and commentator discusses with Boardroom his venture capital fund, Rosberg Ventures, managing nearly $200 million in assets.
For 11 years across 206 Grands Prix, Nico Rosberg competed at the highest level of Formula 1 for Mercedes and Williams, experiencing the fastest and most exhilarating adrenaline rushes and dopamine hits in all of popular professional sports. After finishing second in the drivers’ championship in 2014 and 2015 behind teammate Lewis Hamilton, the German driver racked up nine wins and 16 podium finishes in 21 races in 2016, winning his first and only F1 drivers’ championship. A week later, Rosberg shocked the world by announcing his retirement at just 31 years old, dropping the mic by finishing his racing career on top.
“I have climbed my mountain, I am on the peak, so this feels right,” Rosberg said at the time in December 2016. “This has been my target. And now I’ve made it.”
Over the last nine years, Rosberg has set out to raise a family and occasionally sit in the commentary seat for F1 races for Sky Sports. He’s also found a new passion in his life that fuels him with a similar competitive spirit and energy that he found on the track. He discovered a new mountain to climb in the cutthroat world of business, finance, and venture capital.
“It’s the thrill of competing and winning now in business that really keeps me going,” Rosberg told Boardroom earlier this month, two weeks after his 40th birthday, “and I’m finding the same competitive spirit as in Formula 1. In the startup world, these founders are relentless in their pursuit to achieve greatness. The importance of building a great team around you is very inspiring, and it’s incredible the value creation that happens in the startup world and how it transforms our future.”
Rosberg Ventures has invested more than $100 million in some of the largest venture capital funds in the U.S. in just over two years, with the goal of reaching $200 million under management by the end of the year. He’s able to collaborate with some of Europe’s most elite families who own the biggest companies on the continent and provide them with exclusive access to some of the world’s largest venture capital funds that are normally reserved, he said, for U.S. entities and endowments. Within the next six weeks or so, Rosberg Ventures will begin making its first direct investments into later-stage funding rounds into some of the world’s most promising startups.
“It’s an amazing opportunity to generate returns,” he said. “If you get it right and do a good job in the startup world, you can make great returns, the best returns.”
Rosberg has also seen a great deal of success as an angel investor. An ideal company he looks for helps Europe’s biggest companies transform, digitalize, and decarbonize, but he’s seen the best results investing in companies specializing in AI and automation. ElevenLabs, an AI audio startup, raised $180 million back in January at a $3.3 billion valuation. It can synthesize speech, including automating Netflix movies into 100 different languages with perfect accents, Rosberg said.
Another hit investment is Applied Intuition, a company that provides software for the next generation of motor vehicles. Last month, a Series F funding round valued the company at $15 billion. And Lovable, an AI development tool for apps, websites, and virtual agents, is reportedly on track to soon raise $150 million at a $2 billion valuation.
In the startup world, like on an F1 track, most of the time, the races you run or the investments you make don’t end up as winners. Rosberg estimated that 70% of startups fail, 20% more or less break even, and 10% succeed.
“I was almost always losing,” Rosberg said about his racing career, where he won in 23 of his 206 starts, “and that’s completely taken away my fear of failure. Now in business, some of the greatest possible outcomes start out as being some of the riskiest projects. There was only a 10% chance of Rosberg ventures succeeding, but I don’t have any problem taking those chances and really going all out, maximum attack, fully committed.”
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That full commitment to Rosberg Ventures still finds its way to the F1 tracks around the world today. When he’s doing commentary at races viewed by millions around the world, Rosberg views it as free advertising for his business.
“In venture now, there’s so many fans of F1 that it really helps to keep me top of mind for those people,” Rosberg said. “They’ll see me at the racetrack on Sunday and then Monday I have a call with them and they’re like ‘I just saw him yesterday.'”
While it’s unclear what his strategy is in the boardroom, he’s been known for a direct commentary style that doesn’t beat around the bush, which Rosberg explains is rare these days in Formula 1 and in sports as a whole.
“The world of commentating is such that the teams and drivers have a lot of power and they’re also able to blacklist you,” he explained. “If you are too critical, you won’t be able to get any content from them anymore. So in the world of sports media, everybody has to be careful. And I’m in the fortunate position that I’m independent. I just come in occasionally. I don’t depend on the salary that I get there, which I’m lucky. So I can speak more freely. But in the end, the entire sports world is an entertainment business, and we live off our fans being entertained and loving sports. And contribute a little bit to that excitement by being more open and frank in my views. So it’s a win-win for everybody.”
Rosberg also brought some of those frank, open opinions to the table for this feature. He was complimentary of the way Liberty Media has brought new fans to Formula 1, especially in America and globally with women and younger demographics. Every F1 team is valued at more than $1 billion, and the sport seems to be in a healthy place.
Less healthy is the current Mercedes car, which has the team third in the constructors’ standings despite what Rosberg called a championship-caliber driver in George Russell and a generational talent in Kimi Antonelli. There is also the chance that the driver lineup gets blown up if Max Verstappen becomes available.
“When one of the best ever in our sport is remotely available,” he said, “you have to explore that.”
The car is also not that great, per Rosberg, at Ferrari, which has contributed to the difficult early start for his former teammate Hamilton. However, that equation could all change next year with the introduction of new car rules that will make them lighter, more agile, and place a greater emphasis on battery power. Cadillac will join the grid as the 11th team, bringing a new car that will level the playing field for every constructor.
“It mixes the grid up,” Rosberg said. “It’s fresh. It creates some unexpected outcomes. And the drivers need to make decisions on where they’re going next year, so it’s a difficult decision for drivers like Max.”
We’ll see over the course of 2025 whether the 27-year-old Verstappen actually goes through with leaving Red Bull, which could be difficult considering he has a contract that reportedly runs through the 2028 season. He would be 31 at the end of that term, the same age as Rosberg when he abruptly retired after that 2016 championship. Rosberg sought a fresh start to mix things up in business, and like the 20-plus years he spent in motorsports, he said he’s in the venture capital game for the long haul.
Within the next five years, Rosberg aims to have $1 billion in assets under management. He wants to be directly involved in more generational companies that are among that elusive successful 10% to help him toward that goal.
“If we have a couple more coming through in the next couple of years,” he said, “I would consider that becoming a VC world champion.”
Unlike his F1 career, it seems like Rosberg would be happy to find some more business peaks to climb, even if and when he reaches the top of the venture capital mountain.
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