Lukasz Garbowski, chief investment officer at BTomorrow Ventures, is one of the leading corporate venturing professionals in our 2025 Powerlist.
Lukasz Garbowski leads investment activity at BAT’s CVC arm BTomorrow Ventures (BTV), a unit he co-founded in 2019. Since its launch, the CVC has grown from a team of three to a group of 17 and its portfolio of investments number approximately 30 companies.
Garbowski, who stepped into the chief investment officer role in May, oversees investments at a time of transition for the venture unit, specifically, a second £200m fund and a new managing director, Annie Goman.
With the launch of its second fund, the CVC is aligning even closer with the parent company’s corporate agenda. This includes investing in technologies to support its ‘smokeless future’ agenda that are horizon three.
“BAT has a strong transformational vision to achieve 50% of its revenue from non-combustible products by 2035. BTV is trying to accelerate and support this transformational journey through igniting collaborations between BAT and innovative global startups. We want to be part of the corporate agenda at every step of the transformation,” says Garbowski.
“We want to be part of the corporate agenda at every step of the transformation”
The team will continue to invest in areas ranging from functional food and beverage brands, to companies with emerging technologies that can support BAT with its innovation and transformation. These include technologies for delivering products to the consumer in sectors such as digitisation, sustainability and logistics.
“The focus of BTV Fund I was largely on the end product. While we will continue this, Fund II will also explore how a CVC unit and innovative minority investments can play a pivotal role in supporting a wider range of BAT’s capabilities, not only the final product proposition,” says Garbowski.
Startup investments in BTV’s portfolio include: ClearMetal, an AI-powered platform for automating supply chain logistics; Feel, a producer of functional foods for female consumers; and Hesperos, a drug discovery platform that uses safety and efficacy data on chemicals and novel therapeutics.
Garbowski was a mergers and acquisition associate at Citi before joining BAT as senior manager of mergers and acquisitions in 2012. He was also global head of commercial finance at Nicoventures, an internal startup at BAT, before he joined the ventures arm.
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.
