Kei Onishi, CEO and managing director at Yamaha Motor Ventures, is one of the 100 leading corporate venturing professionals in our 2025 Powerlist.

Yamaha Motor Ventures, the CVC arm of Japan-based industrials conglomerate Yamaha Motor, was founded in 2015. Kei Onishi joined the ventures team in 2022, after more than a decade with the company in roles spanning from engineering to new business development. He now leads the team as CEO and managing director.
The team, which manages 30 active portfolio companies and has $300m in assets under management, is segmented into two functions. The investment team of four are largely externally hired, all with a CVC or investment banking background. The platform team, whose main role is supporting portfolio companies’ product development, are internally transferred from the business unit and are engineers. This functional decoupling works well for the group, which introduced more than 100 companies to the business units last year, leading to six contracts.
Onishi avoids micromanagement, providing autonomy and offering resources. “Everyone’s goals should be aligned with our corporate goals. But how they get there is their call.”
“We need to be really cautious about figuring out what is hype versus what is fundamentally game-changing.”
A recent highlight for Onishi that showcases the success of his investment-first approach was Yamaha Motor Ventures’ journey with Shippeo. An initial investment was made in 2022. Last spring, Yamaha announced a partnership with the portfolio company, allowing the manufacturing company visibility into all containers transporting its goods, along with predicative arrival estimates. An additional investment was made in early 2025.
Yamaha also notes its 2024 investment in Path Robotics, which offers automated robotic welding systems. Onishi says, “Most manufacturing engineering jobs for existing products or even existing processes are pattern recognition, and AI is very good at pattern recognition.” The system only requires uploading the 3D CAD design for the finished product and AI will create a workflow, do the welding and complete QC and QA checks.
Onishi plans to continue investing in advanced manufacturing, material science, sustainable material energy transition, robotics and software for hardware. However, he says: “We need to be really cautious about figuring out what is hype versus what is fundamentally game-changing.”

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.