Tamara Steffens, managing director at TR Ventures, is one of the 100 leading corporate venturing professionals in our 2026 Powerlist.
Tamara Steffens, managing director of Thomson Reuters Ventures, has built a high-impact corporate venturing platform.
Canada-based Thomson Reuters launched its inaugural $100m corporate VC fund in 2021, with Steffens joining in 2022 to help build and lead the unit. Since then, she has helped scale it to a strategic engine for the company’s innovation agenda.
This is most visible in how the unit approaches artificial intelligence. While much of venture capital has been absorbed by the foundation model hype, Steffens has pushed a more pragmatic thesis: the real value lies in vertical AI applications embedded in professional workflows, where return on investment is immediate and measurable.
This focus reflects Thomson Reuters’ unique vantage point over its 170-year history. Its customers, lawyers, accountants, compliance officers, operate in highly regulated environments rich in proprietary data. For Steffens, that makes AI not just a growth opportunity, but a defensible one. Companies that combine domain expertise with privileged datasets, she argues, will be best positioned to build durable businesses as the market matures.
Reinforcing this, Thomson Reuters announced a second $150m fund in February 2025 to back category-defining companies across legal tech, tax and accounting, risk, fraud, compliance, fintech and applied AI.
Steffens’ background as both a startup operator and former head of Microsoft’s M12 corporate venturing unit has helped her build a globally minded portfolio and disciplined investment programme with clear business relevance.
Thomson Reuters has completed 30 investments, in the past year including Firmpilot, Fieldguide and Bretton AI, and TR Ventures has also made selective limited partner commitments to VC funds, including Canary, Norte and Wavemaker, broadening the platform’s access to important venture ecosystems while maintaining direct investing as its primary model.
In addition to building TR Ventures into a high-impact strategic fund, Steffens has contributed meaningfully to the broader CVC/VC ecosystem, including support for founder diversity through M12’s Female Founders Competition.
With over $250m under management and a growing track record, TR Ventures is emerging as a case study in how corporate capital can move beyond experimentation to become a core strategic capability.
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:
