How Amadeus Ventures Survived Covid as a Core Capability

When Covid-19 grounded global travel, Amadeus IT seriously considered folding its venture unit and liquidating the portfolio. Suzanna Chiu, who heads the investment arm at the travel software provider, kept it alive by proving the team was what she calls a "core capability" — not a peripheral nice-to-have.

Her argument is blunt: a corporate investment arm seen as peripheral gets cut first when the parent hits a crisis. One seen as an embedded, trusted partner survives and leads the recovery.

Amadeus Ventures, operating since 2014 with a lean team, faced that test more brutally than most when the pandemic halted travel worldwide. Leadership weighed every option, including shutdown. Instead, the unit emerged stronger.

Chiu recalls "a very strong comradeship at the time, how all of us can contribute and work together to go through this."

What did the CVC team do differently during the crisis?

The team halted new investments. It then worked closely with portfolio companies to build solutions for Amadeus IT's travel-sector customers, who were themselves struggling to survive.

The clearest example: a collaboration with portfolio company Volantio.

"For example, the collaboration with Volantio — combining their solutions and Amadeus solution we actually provided some capabilities for our airlines to detect early demand signals from the markets. Is it anywhere that we can suggest to them on certain marketing strategies, when we are looking at a recovery, is able to pick up faster?" Chiu said.

The partnership combined Volantio's technology with Amadeus solutions to help airlines spot early demand signals and sharpen marketing strategies as recovery began.

The payoff was twofold. Amadeus IT's airline customers recovered faster. And the venture unit generated significant goodwill inside the business — enough that the crisis, rather than marginalizing the CVC team, solidified its position as a key operating capability.

Why does model choice matter for a CVC unit?

Chiu's tenure — she has led the unit for more than a decade — is the subject of the latest interview in Global Venturing's CVC Titans series, which profiles corporate venture leaders who have run their units for over 10 years.

In the interview, Chiu discusses:

• How Amadeus Ventures was originally built
• How its choices of model and investment thesis shaped the unit's trajectory
• What it takes for a corporate venture team to earn a permanent place inside a corporation

What is the lesson for corporate venturing?

The Amadeus case turns the conventional crisis playbook on its head. Most corporate venture units retrench or dissolve when the parent's core business comes under existential pressure. Amadeus Ventures did pause new deals — but it doubled down on portfolio collaboration, deploying its startups' technology directly to customers who needed it.

That shift, from investor to operator-partner, is what converted a cost center under review into a recovery asset. For CVC leaders building units meant to outlast downturns, the implication is direct: the portfolio's value in a crisis is measured by what it does for the parent's customers, not by its returns.