These are the 100 most influential people who are influencing the corporate venturing industry.

Powerlist 2024 group of headshots

This is not just a list of names, it’s a guide to different CVC models

The GCV Powerlist is exciting to select and publish because it allows us to showcase the people who are at the very top of the corporate venturing profession. These 100 people are the ones doing the biggest deals, the most deals, who have the longest staying power, or who exercise an outsized amount of ‘soft power’ in the industry by educating and sharing best practice.

Those we have featured in longer profiles have particularly interesting methodologies that we wanted to share. Take Crispin Leick at EnBW New Ventures, who believes that CVC should focus exclusively on minority equity investments – leaving venture building and incubators to others. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Gurdeep Singh Kohli, who was part of the founding team at SC Ventures, which leans heavily into venture building.

Whichever side of the debate you fall on, the point is we are spotlighting the different ways to do corporate venturing well. Take from this book what fits your corporation, your industry and your budget best.

The GCV Powerlist is also a reflection of current trends. The number of generative AI-focused investors – with considerable firepower – are notable this year. These include Salesforce Ventures, which doubled the size of its AI fund to $500m last year; ServiceNow, which added $1bn to its AI-focused fund; and OpenAi, which is both a recipient of venture funding but also has its own $175m fund to invest in new generative AI startups.

The list also has a lot of new entrants – 36 of these names are new to the GCV Powerlist, including Eve Burton, chairwoman at HearstLab and Adam Bazih, managing partner at Stellantis Ventures.

We also have an increasing number of people who have been on the GCV Powerlist five or more times – a group we are calling the Five Star Powerlisters – a clear sign of how corporate venturing units are seeing longer survival rates.

We have always maintained that as the VC sector suffers something of a retreat in the current challenging market conditions, the corporate VC sector has a chance to shine, if it can harness the best parts of what corporates can bring – technical expertise, patience, an understanding of how to scale – while avoiding the short-sighted missteps they have sometimes been guilty of. This group of Powerlisters can demonstrate how that can be done.

Powerlist 2024 (alphabetically in order of surname) 

Powerlist cover

Download the 2024 GCV Powerlist here