Yu Huang, global head, venture investment and partnership at Technip Energies, is one of our top 50 Emerging Leaders in corporate venturing for 2025.
After starting in finance and corporate development, Yu Huang moved to business development, before launching her own venture, New Voyage Energy Partners, which focused on cross-border business development.
After running this for a few years, she went on to lead a global corporate strategy programme that prepared Technip Energies’ spinoff during the covid-19 pandemic. This prepared her to lead operations at energy advisory subsidiary Genesis Energies over the next two years, before her present role at Technip Energies.
“I am fascinated by how technologies shape our industry and daily lives. On the personal front, I have been an angel investor and have been coaching startup founders in the Houston community. When Technip Energies was setting up a CVC unit, I thought I would be able to contribute significantly given my background.”
“There were a lot of rolled-up sleeves to get the deal done. It was quite rewarding when we got that closed”
As a founding member of Technip Energies’ CVC practice, Huang was involved in building the team, procedure and reputation, both internally and externally. The challenges were immense, but the work was very rewarding, she says. Her team’s first direct investment was a series A round for carbon-capture startup Ardent Technologies in 2023. “There were a lot of rolled-up sleeves to get the deal done. It was quite rewarding when we got that closed.”
Her team looks for technology that can help grow the parent company’s business. “We try to find the alignment between the investment thesis and the business priorities and strategies. We tend to stick between seed and series A with a cheque size between $1m and $3m.”
Huang is excited about the potential of generative AI to disrupt the energy industry. “I am curious to see how adaptive our industry is going to be to generative AI, and the speed of that.”
As for advice to those entering corporate venturing, she says: “Start from the pain points of the business. Understand the problems and then try to scale the technologies that could potentially solve them.”
See the full list of Emerging Leaders 2025 here.
