Bown's move follows BP's decision in July to close its venture unit.
Chad Bown has joined Flathead Forge, the Houston-based investment and venture building firm, as partner and managing director. The move comes six weeks after BP said it would wind down its corporate venturing unit.
Bown spent more than a decade at BP Ventures, where he served as managing director and led venture investment and portfolio activities across the Americas. The unit invested more than $1bn in emerging technology companies, and Bown’s board roles spanned portfolio companies including Eavor Technology, Xpansiv, Beyond Limits, and Saltworks Technologies. He was recognised on the GCV Powerlist in 2023 and as a GCV Emerging Leader in 2021.
His move follows BP’s July decision to close its venture unit and sell minority stakes in more than ten portfolio companies to Verdane as the company refocuses on its core oil and gas business. It marks a transition from corporate venture capital to an independent, operator-led investment platform focused on industrial water, critical minerals, resource recovery, and enabling infrastructure.
At Flathead Forge, Bown will work alongside partners Douglas Lee, David Lee, and Noel Knape across investment strategy and execution, portfolio value creation, capital formation, and institutional partnerships.
Flathead Forge invests where supercycles converge: AI and data centers, power demand, advanced manufacturing, and critical minerals all land on the same constraints of water, energy, and access to critical resources. The firm backs founders and forms companies across four verticals: water purification and valorization, critical mineral processing, advanced gas systems, and hard-tech enablement platforms.
“A decade of venture investing teaches you what separates the technologies that scale from the ones that stall, and it is rarely the science. It is the operating depth around the company,” said Bown. “Flathead Forge is built out of exactly that, and I picked the platform whose edge I had spent ten years learning to recognize.”
“Chad spent a decade proving his talent inside one of the best corporate venture programs in energy,” said Douglas Lee, managing partner of Flathead Forge. “Talent at that level eventually needs a platform of its own, one where the investing, the operating, and the building sit in the same room.”
Flathead Forge describes itself as an operator-led opportunity builder whose companies turn industrial liabilities like produced water, brines, and waste gas into purified water, critical minerals, and specialty chemicals. Its principals have built, run, and sold industrial water and energy companies, and work inside the companies they back in addition to providing capital. Bown will remain based in Houston, where the firm is headquartered.
