Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars Awards 2017: #7 Bruce Niven

Bruce Niven is chief investment officer of Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures (SAEV), the $500m global corporate venturing arm of Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s national oil company and the world’s most valuable enterprise.

Niven joined just over five years ago, in July 2011, when it was in the set-up phase, and he said SAEV had now made 24 investments on three continents.

As if that were not enough, Niven, who has climbed from 12th in last year’s GCV Rising Stars 2016 listing, added: “Recently I have also been part of the set-up team for OGCI Climate Investments, a new $1bn venture and technology demonstration fund founded by 10 oil and gas companies representing almost 20% of oil and gas production. This fund will focus on climate solutions for the oil and gas industry, in particular carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS), and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the natural gas supply chain.”

He is one of a handful of venture executives with the experience to help coordinate the 10 Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) member companies – BP, China National Petroleum Corporation, Eni, Pemex, Reliance Industries, Repsol, Royal Dutch Shell, Saudi Aramco, Statoil and Total. Before SAEV, he spent more than seven years at Itouchu, a global Fortune 500 Japanese trading and investment company.

As a result, he understands the challenges involved in commercialising technology that multiple parties can use and deploy successfully. He said the OGCI fund “is a flexible financing vehicle that will do a mix of venture, joint ventures, project and demonstration, and R&D funding – venture will likely be the major part”.

It is an experience and skillset that is much appreciated. Majid Mufti, CEO of SAEV since last summer, said: “Bruce is a seasoned VC professional, so he is an important figure in SAEV.”

Niven added for the Rising Stars profile: “Looking at industrial technologies, the pure-play VC model struggles. You need time and capital and the expertise of those that participate at scale. And internal R&D often fails to deliver innovation efficiently as it does not generally have the right incentives or skills to drive commercialisation. CVC to me is the model that works best in these domains. And as an investor you are differentiated. You are able to get the attention of the most exciting new companies. That is what attracts me to it.”

While SAEV has backed a handful of funds, including Zouk, Tsing Capital and Braemar Energy Ventures, its main holdings have been in upstream-focused startups, including Target, Paradigm Drilling Services, Parsable, InflowControl, Zilift, Sekal, Cannseal, Comitt Well Solutions, Geomec, Zahroof, Maana, NanoMech, 908devices and AnTech.

However, its downstream holdings, which include Novomer, Rive Technology, Siluria, Conxtech and Airborne Oil & Gas, have caught most attention after a carve-out transaction last year.

In terms of success stories, Niven noted that Saudi Aramco acquired, for up to $100m in November, one of two technology businesses being developed by its portfolio company, Novomer, which SAEV had backed in December 2013.

This technology, called Converge, uses carbon dioxide (CO2) as a feedstock for producing polyols, which are used in coatings, foams and adhesives, rather than relying on petroleum-based polyols.

At the time of the deal, Abdulaziz Al-Judaimi, acting senior vice-president of downstream at Saudi Aramco, said: “By providing access to reliable feedstock supplies, financial stability and unrivalled R&D investment and focus, Saudi Aramco will accelerate the commercialisation of these exciting new polyol materials.”

In July 2015, Saudi Aramco started Saudi Arabia’s first carbon capture and storage pilot project at the Uthmaniyah field and Hawiyah facilities to inject 800,000 tons of CO2 every year.

Niven said of Converge: “It is cost-effective, its environmentally friendly, and it works. I believe this is the best CO2-to-chemicals play in the market today, and we are very pleased to be a part of it. The team there has done a great job.

“We are also now seeing real results from a refining catalyst we have invested in, and we see potential for $100m a year bottom-line benefit if we deploy this system-wide. If that works out, it will pay back our entire fund just from that one investment.

“The big challenge in CVC is always that you are merging two worlds with very different cultures and skillsets. You need to build the right team. You need experienced savvy investors [Niven is a chartered financial analyst] who also have the right personalities to deal with the corporation, and you need people from the corporate side who know the organisation but who are also self-starters with an entrepreneurial flair. The industry could do a better job of that.

“You also need to consider CVC within the broader context of external innovation and technology adoption. The engagement does not end with the investment. It has to be followed up through technology, product and application development, then trialling and adoption.

“Corporations need to be more startup-friendly through this whole process, not only in the CVC team.”

Niven’s own experience, first as a consultant for Omega Partners Strategy Consultants in the wireless telecoms industry through the late 1990s, before he founded a smartphone app developer, Telepathix, in the early 2000s has given him empathy for both sides.

While Saudi Arabia might be a long way from St John’s College at Oxford University, where Niven studied engineering and management in the early 1990s, Niven is used to travel, having lived in nine countries. It has all helped him build his global perspective, even if it has meant spending little time in any single place for his interests of cycling and tennis.