Behind Petrobras’ new $96m energy transition venture fund

When Valetec Capital, the most prominent CVC-as-a-Service provider in Brazil, saw that a group led by Brazilian oil and gas giant Petrobras was tendering out a contract for someone to manage their new BRL500m ($96m) cleantech VC fund, they saw it as a strategic imperative to pursue it as aggressively as possible.

“If another manager won this, it would be a serious threat to our leadership in this segment,” says Peter Seiffert, CEO of Valetec Capital, which was selected in October 2025 as the preferred bidder to manage the fund.

Such was the impact of Brazil’s largest company entering the VC space, especially in the context of the Brazilian venture capital landscape, which has been tied down by some of the highest interest rates in the region – of 15% – and has seen a spate of CVC unit closures over the past couple of years.

The call for proposals went out at the beginning of June 2025, looking for a manager to invest in areas like renewable energy, energy storage, carbon capture, electric mobility, sustainable fuels and other cleantech startups.

The fund has already achieved first close prior to awarding the fund manager. Petrobras, being the main anchor investor, contributed roughly half of it, with Brazilian development bank BNDES putting up a quarter and project financing agency Finep committing BRL 60m.

Petrobras and BNDES will double down on their stakes for the second close, but Finep will not, requiring Valetec to find investors for the remainder, which it is now in the process of doing. Seiffert says they are already in talks with institutional as well as corporate investors in the energy space to fill out the gap.

It ended up being the most competitive procurement process for a fund manager that BNDES has ever launched, with 32 bidders vying for the award.

“I would say that this was the largest and most exciting fund to be launched in the last two years – something that moved the industry as a whole,” says Ricardo Kahn, director of consulting and innovation at Valetec Capital.

From oil champion to transition advocate

In early 2023, former Brazilian senator Jean Paul Prates took over as CEO of Petrobras and set the company – which had in the preceding few years been focused on maximising revenue from its offshore oil assets – on course to be what he called a major driver of the country’s energy transition. This shift in strategy, aimed at diversifying from just oil and gas, continued past his ouster and eventual succession as president by Magda Chambriard.

Lofty sustainability goals were put in place, among them achieving operational net-zero by 2050, investing heavily into decarbonisation projects and expanding renewables resources. The ground had been set for the idea that eventually became a fund to invest in cleantech startups.

“We are an oil and gas company. We need to accelerate our knowledge and project development to implement projects faster in the energy transition,” says Luiza Contursi, projects and new technology integration manager at Petrobras.

A corporate VC strategy was seen as a way to speed up the company’s foray into the sustainability arena. There was internal deliberation about what form the fund would take, and it took a while to get things moving as there was a lot of internal education that needed to be done, both on the energy transition and on the benefits of venture capital to pursue it.

“We were trying to explain that startups will have access to smart money – capital that is qualified, intelligent, and strategically accelerating growth,” she says.

The decision to ultimately find an external manager for a fund, rather than building a CVC team internally, came down to knowhow, and the corporate’s assessment that there wasn’t the VC experience in the company to manage it the way that a service provider with a solid track record would be able to.

Going external would also bypass the many layers of approval that would be needed to set something up internally, letting them get off the ground quicker. It would also allow the fund to be more agile in its operation, for the same reason.

Petrobras hope to, in addition to any financial returns, gain access to new technologies, potentially going into joint ventures or bolstering its M&A pipeline through the fund.

While it is a Petrobras-led consortium, the point of the fund is not only financial, or even just strategic, but also developmental. BNDES and Finep are public institutions with interests in developing the ecosystem.

“We are mobilising the capital market to accelerate investments in clean technologies, renewable energies, and solutions that ensure the country’s energy security,” said BNDES’ president Aloizio Mercadante when Valetec was tapped as the first choice manager.

Why Valetec?

“It was an Olympic 100m sprint. Every millisecond could make the difference,” says Seiffert.

Valetec, which went into the bid alongside a yet-unnamed partner and have a solid reputation in Brazil, offered competitive pricing to manage the fund, according to Seiffert, who also said they padded out their ranks with four new senior investment professionals – also yet-unnamed – specifically for this fund.

Contursi also pointed to their track record for innovation, their name recognition in the Brazilian market and experience in the sector as among the reasons why they were chosen as the preferred bidder.

There were two runner-up bids, namely a team of Ahead Ventures and Aecom in second place, and Lightrock in third. Valetec is currently in the final stages of legal due diligence and negotiations ahead of contract finalisation.

The initial investment pipeline is already been explored, with active scouting in areas like bioenergy, hydrogen, advanced materials, industrial efficiency and digital solutions. Collaborations with startups will be assessed on a case-by-case basis, but ideally there would be some sort of linkup with each portfolio company.

“Each investment will be supported by an internal sponsor responsible for evaluating opportunities for pilots, testing and scaling,” says Contursi.

Valetec has a high level of autonomy to manage the fund, with full decision-making control over investments. Petrobras will have observer seats on the investment committee but no voting power.

It will invest in startups between seed and series B stage with an exclusive focus on companies in Brazil, or Brazilian companies with operations elsewhere.

A separate committee is also set up to handle the synergies between portfolio companies and the fund’s investors, which will include not just Petrobras but any other corporates that end up filling out the second close.

Currently, the plan is to achieve final close and go operational in the second quarter. The parties want to get the award formalised and the first investment made by mid-year, says Contursi, ahead of Brazil’s elections in October, to get ahead of any political changes that may result from it.

See all recent corporate-backed energy deals in the CVC Funding Round Database