Ruth Porat, president and CIO at Alphabet, is one of the 100 leading corporate venturing professionals in our 2026 Powerlist.
Ruth Porat has spent much of her career allocating capital at scale. First as chief financial officer of Morgan Stanley, then as CFO of Google and Alphabet, and now as president and chief investment officer of Alphabet, she sits at the centre of one of the world’s most influential corporate investment ecosystems.
Porat studied at Stanford University, the London School of Economics and Wharton School before joining Morgan Stanley, where she spent more than two decades and rose to CFO. She joined Google in 2015 and quickly earned a reputation for imposing financial discipline while supporting the company’s ambitious growth agenda.
In 2023, chief executive Sundar Pichai promoted Porat to the newly created role of president and chief investment officer, expanding her remit beyond finance to encompass Alphabet’s investment strategy and portfolio of emerging businesses. The move placed Alphabet’s venture and growth investment arms, GV and CapitalG, under her leadership, alongside the company’s other bets portfolio.
That portfolio includes autonomous driving business Waymo, healthcare ventures Verily and Calico, connectivity unit Access and moonshot incubator X. Porat’s challenge has been to balance the long-term horizons and significant capital requirements of these businesses with greater accountability and strategic focus. Rather than scaling back Alphabet’s appetite for innovation, she has sought to concentrate resources behind ventures capable of generating transformative returns.
One of the clearest examples is Isomorphic Labs, the AI drug discovery company spun out of DeepMind. Alphabet has continued to support the business as it develops artificial intelligence tools for pharmaceutical research. In 2025, Isomorphic Labs raised $600m in its first external funding round, led by Thrive Capital with participation from GV and Alphabet. The company followed that with a $2.1bn financing round in 2026 backed by Alphabet, GV and CapitalG, underlining the group’s conviction that AI-driven drug discovery could become a major commercial opportunity.
Porat also oversees CapitalG, Alphabet’s growth-stage investment fund, which typically backs later-stage technology companies in sectors such as enterprise software, AI infrastructure, cybersecurity and fintech. The fund’s portfolio has included companies such as Stripe, Databricks, CrowdStrike and UiPath. More recently, CapitalG participated in Bedrock Robotics’ $270m series B round, backing autonomous technology for the construction sector.
For corporate venturing professionals, Porat’s significance lies in the breadth of her influence. Few executives oversee both a major corporate venture platform and a portfolio of deep tech businesses spanning autonomous vehicles, healthcare and artificial intelligence. As Alphabet increases its investment in AI and other frontier technologies, Porat remains one of the world’s most consequential corporate capital allocators.
The GCV 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.
Here’s a snapshot of their recent deals:
