George Kellerman, founding managing director at Woven Capital, is one of the 100 leading corporate venturing professionals in our 2025 Powerlist.
George Kellerman leads Woven Capital, a $800m growth fund that was initially set up to support Toyota’s mobility subsidiary Woven by Toyota. Last year that remit was broadened to being the growth fund for Toyota as a whole.
“Now that we are representing all of Toyota, we are investing in everything, not just autonomous vehicles and software-defined vehicles, but hydrogen fuel cells, battery technologies, anything related to the future of mobility. It is really an exciting time for us,” Kellerman told GCV in an interview last year.
Set up in 2021, the unit has a team of 23 people and has 16 startups in its portfolio. The team noticeably picked up its investment pace in 2024 following the broadened remit, backing seven startups during the year.
This pace continued into 2025 with the first quarter alone seeing investments into AI-led automated vehicle inspection company UVeye, transportation supply chain visibility company Shippeo and reusable rocket developer
Stoke Space Technologies.
“Now that we are representing all of Toyota, we are investing in everything, not just autonomous vehicles and software-defined vehicles, but hydrogen fuel cells, battery technologies, anything related to the future of mobility. It is really an exciting time for us,” Kellerman told GCV in an interview last year.
Woven Capital tends to invest in more mature startups, from series B onwards, dovetailing well with Toyota’s other investment fund, Toyota Ventures, which tends to invest at the earlier, seed to series A stage.
Prior to Toyota, Kellerman was one of the founding members of Yamaha Motor Ventures. During his tenure, he launched the Yamaha Motor Exploratory Fund, a $100m early-stage fund and he initiated and led Yamaha Motor’s investment and partnership activity in agricultural automation and robotics.
Before Yamaha, Kellerman served as a managing partner at early-stage venture fund and seed accelerator 500 Startups, as a managing director of Dell Japan’s consumer business, as a VP of International Business Development at Yahoo Japan and as corporate counsel at Yahoo.
The Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist represents the 100 individuals spearheading the future of the corporate venturing industry.
These individuals excel in terms of their venturing approach and structure, number and quality of portfolio companies and in their contributions to the corporate venturing profession.
