Sectors
Energy utilities are ramping up their investments in technologies that can squeeze more performance from the electricity grid, as power connectivity becomes an increasingly large bottleneck in energy transition.
“The biggest challenge with renewables today is interconnection to the grid,” says Pradeep Tagare, head of National Grid Partners, the corporate venturing arm of UK-based energy system operator and utility National Grid. “In some regions of the US, it can take a few years for a renewable project to be connected to the grid.”
As governments set targets for decarbonising electricity systems, startup investments and R&D projects are happening behind the scenes to alleviate the hold-ups.
Technologies that increase the capacity of existing transmission lines, for example, are a focus for electricity providers. These near-term solutions for improving grid efficiency help companies skirt the high costs of building new transmission lines and distribution – lines that carry electricity at low voltage to consumers. It also helps reduce the length of time it takes to secure permits and then build new infrastructure, which can often take decades.
One of National Grid Partners’ investments is in Line Vision, a provider of power line sensor technology that can increase the capacity of existing transmission lines by up to 40%.
National Grid, which also operates on the US east coast, has deployed the technology in New York and is looking at doing the same in the UK. “We can increase the capacity on existing lines by 20%-30%,” says Tagare. “This is not going to solve the problem, but it is a step in the right direction,” he says.
The CVC has also invested in Total Solution Conductor, a startup that replaces old materials in high-voltage transmission lines with next-generation superconductors that double transmission lines’ capacity without the need to retrofit towers or other infrastructure.
“It is very promising because it can solve the immediate term, one-to-five-year problems with a 2x or a 3x capacity increase,” says Tagare.
EDP Ventures, the CVC arm of the Portugal-based utility, is also looking at investments in technologies that can optimise the existing grid infrastructure to increase loads on the system. It invested in US startup, Splight, for example, that uses AI to reduce bottlenecks in transmission capacity and allow more renewable energy generation on the grid. The startup raised $12m in a seed funding round in July 2024.
“If you start digitalising the grid more, sensing with software, you start having a more real-time view of the grid. Only that allows you to decrease the curtailment requirements that the system operator from time-to-time issues,” says Frederico Goncalves, head of EDP’s investment arm.
Goncalves acknowledges that technologies to optimise the existing grid are only a short-term solution. As more renewable generation comes onto the electricity system, it means all types of investment will be needed in new infrastructure.
The UK is in particular need of grid upgrades to meet the government’s target of generating 95% of electricity from clean energy sources by 2030. The government’s Climate Change Committee says the UK needs five times the amount of solar it has today by 2030, four times the amount of offshore wind and two times the amount of onshore wind to meet its goal.
The government plans to accelerate planning and consenting for connecting renewable energy to the grid. This includes the build-out of underground transmission lines that can be easier to get approval for than overground lines, which often face opposition from communities living near where the transmission lines are planned.
The UK is particularly hampered by transmission bottlenecks as most of the clean energy projects coming from offshore wind is built in Scotland, while most of the energy is needed in the south of the UK, where electricity use is highest.
Because of the large number of connections and renewable energy development, technologies that allow developers to understand how the grid will look when their projects are ready to connect are critical, says Bethany Foster, energy systems innovation lead at Innovate UK, the country’s national innovation agency, which researches and tests grid technologies to meet clean energy goals.
“There are a lot of complex flexibility programmes which require a lot of real time visibility. An innovator cannot come into the energy landscape if it does not understand where the new supply and demand centres are going to be and where the constraints are,” she says.
These types of spatial planning tools, which include digital twin technologies that provide a virtual replica of a physical system now and in the future, are going to be “very valuable for the future planning and consent processes”, says Foster.
Innovate UK has funded a project called Phased Switch System, a technology that seeks to integrate new offshore wind energy without causing grid imbalances. It has also funded a project called REACT, led by Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, an electricity distribution network, which creates an interactive geospatial map of the transmission lines in Scotland to allow developers to see where they can potentially connect to the grid.
A large amount of intermittent renewable energy increases the need for so-called ancillary services that can dispatch power when there is insufficient wind or sun. Clean dispatchable technologies that the government is looking at include hydrogen and renewable gases and fuels generated from carbon capture, utilisation and storage technology.
“Renewable gases give us an opportunity to clean up some of the demand for natural gas while we continue to accelerate connections. Not everyone will be able to electrify straight away, but they can at least reduce some of their carbon emissions in the meantime,” says Foster.
Battery storage technologies will be integral to balancing an electricity grid increasingly reliant on intermittent renewable energy. Foster says all types of battery storage must be developed including gaseous storage of hydrogen, low-carbon renewable gases and biogases.
Investors and innovators should be looking at the specific needs of customers for battery technologies because countries such as the UK have a diverse customer and generation profile, says Foster.
“Customer needs are going to differ in every location depending on what utilities they have access to, the ease of electrification, the ease of getting new connections and whether they can connect to batteries or hydrogen generation facility,” says Foster.
Energy companies are also looking at longer-term technology solutions that will require an overhaul of the electricity grid system. These include superconducting transmission line technology that will be critical for connecting AI data centres, for example. Quantum computing can play a role in modelling scenarios for protecting mission critical assets. And AI technology is being tested for automating planning documents to streamline the review and permitting process.
National Grid is working with startup VEIR, for example, to evaluate superconductor technology for upgrading grids. The company claims its next-generation superconducting transmission lines can deliver up to 10 times more power than conventional lines at the same voltage level.
While VEIR’s technology could be deployed in the near term for specific uses, such as connecting a data centre that needs high capacity lines, it is a technology that is further out, says Tagare.
“It will require a complete overhaul of the existing infrastructure and that is going to take a long time,” says Tagare.
UK electricity and gas utility National Grid’s corporate venture arm became the latest CVC fund to carve out a specific pot of money for AI investments. The company is allocating $100m specifically for these technologies, which it hopes will help it upgrade power grids to cope with unprecedented new levels of demand.
“AI is helping us improve operations and achieve efficiencies we never could with legacy technologies,” says NGP president Steve Smith. “Our AI-powered portfolio is doing everything from accelerating critical construction timelines to boosting transmission line capacity for National Grid.”
National Grid, which operates gas and electricity networks in the UK and US, is, like many other power utilities, seeing its networks coming under pressure from power-hungry data centres, charging demands for electric vehicles and the need to connect renewable energy producers.
The AI investment capital will come from NGP’s existing allocation of $50m to $60m each year, a spokesperson told GCV, and the move came three months after the unit’s total investments passed $500m.
NGP has already supplied more than $150m in cash for 18 AI-focused startups which make up just over a third of its portfolio. Those include infrastructure risk management startup Urbint and Exodigo, which combines AI and sensors to eliminate underground missteps during infrastructure work.
The first new investment made under the plan is in Amperon, the US-based developer of an analytics software platform that uses AI to forecast energy demand. The grid’s increasing complexity makes forecasting more important for load balancing and NGP said it sees “significant potential” for Amperon’s technology in the US and UK.
“Power systems such as National Grid’s are seeing unprecedented challenges, with soaring demand driven by data centres and the electrification of heat and transport, as well as requirements for a more flexible grid with the rise of renewables and EVs,” says National Grid CEO John Pettigrew when announcing the allocation.
“We are seeing AI play a vital role resolving these issues and delivering compelling results across our operations. Scaling AI will continue to help National Grid provide the most efficient and modern grid available for our millions of customers in the US and UK.”
Japanese gas utility Toho Gas launched its first corporate venture capital fund with ¥5bn ($33m) that will be targeted at what it views as new infrastructure areas.
Shin Infrastructure Fund is being managed by Ignition Point Venture Partners, the VC offshoot of consulting firm Ignition Point, and is targeting four overarching sectors: food and agriculture, wellness and well-being, real estate and tourism.
The fund will invest in domestic startups in those fields from seed stage onwards. Toho is seeking to forge partnerships with them in the hope the corporate can create new businesses extending beyond gas provision.
Japan is the world’s largest liquid natural gas importer, but consumption peaked a decade ago and is trending downwards, as renewable energy makes up more of the grid. Imports have also become less reliable due to geopolitical turmoil.
Although announced recently, the fund has been operational since December 2024. Toho took part in a series D round for Terra Charge, creator of a payment system for electric vehicle charging, and invested in solar project developer Shira Solar.
BayWa r.e., the renewable energy arm of German sustainable technology company BayWa Group, has spun out its corporate VC unit.
The independent unit, called rEnergy Partners, will continue to manage the portfolio companies of former investment unit BayWa r.e. Energy Ventures, as well as keep its existing presence in Munich and London.
“The rEnergy team has spun out from BayWa r.e. Group with the goal of creating a leading early-stage energy investment platform. While we embark on this new journey, we will continue to support the existing portfolio of BayWa r.e. Energy Ventures,” announced the unit in a LinkedIn post.
The move comes at a time when some energy companies, such as BP, have announced mass redundancies and a move away from renewable energy, putting the future of their CVCs under question. Apart from the speed, compensation and other benefits that come from an independent structure, spinning out has historically been a solid option for helping venture units survive turbulence at the mothership. The BayWa Group stock price has itself seen a circa 70% drop in the past year.
BayWa r.e. Renewables Ventures’ portfolio includes power purchase agreement contract management platform provider Pexapark, solar asset management platform provider Raycatch and residential solar technology developer Zolar.
From nuclear waste to tyres, batteries, or T-shirts made from plastic bottles, the list of materials that can be recycled has expanded rapidly, accompanied by the development of new recycling methods.
Corporate investors are increasingly putting money into startups that are developing technologies that enable the reuse of materials.
According to GCV’s corporate venturing deal data, there were approximately 50 corporate-backed funding rounds for startups involved in recycling technologies over the past two years.
Here is a list of some of the emerging companies in this field. None have yet raised funding beyond the series A stage, but all are worth monitoring.
Location: Sion, Switzerland
Founded: 2020
Funding to date: $15.3m
More than 90% of the world’s plastics are not recycled, instead ending up in landfills, the ocean or, increasingly, the food chain. DePoly has created a process that breaks down polyester and PET, the plastic used in plastic bottles and clothing, from a polymer structure to its original two monomers, meaning they can be used in new plastics and chemicals.
The process does not use heat or pressure and it does not need the plastic to be sorted, washed, separated or melted beforehand, the way it does with mechanical recycling systems. The Swiss company broke ground on its showcase plant in June last year.
Chemicals producer BASF co-led DePoly’s $13.8m seed round in mid-2023 through BASF Venture Capital, with packaging manufacturer Beiersdorf and Ciech Ventures, the investment arm of chemical provider Ciech, also participating.
Location: Mumbai, India
Founded: 2021
Funding to date: $190,000
Unirec is also tackling plastics recycling, but in a completely different way. It is an Indian fashion brand that produces T-shirts for men and women, as well as blazers and Nehru jackets that are made from recycled plastic bottles.
The company claims that each garment it produces saves a dozen bottles from landfill, adding up to a total of 700,000 so far. Its customers include Tata Power, IndianOil and IDBI Bank, all of which have placed bulk orders for its clothing for use as corporate apparel.
Singapore-based BeyondSeed led the startup’s $190,000 seed round in January 2024, cash that was earmarked for market expansion and research on innovative and sustainable fabrics.
Location: Jakarta, Indonesia
Founded: 2021
Funding to date: $5m
With the fourth largest population on Earth, Indonesia has significant waste management problems, particularly when it comes to plastic pollution and overflowing landfills. Rekosistem is trying to help handle the problem with a Jakarta-based, tech-enabled waste-management and recycling system.
The company has equipped its collection points and material recovery facilities with internet-of-things sensors and uses machine learning to improve waste collection efficiency. On the customer side, residences, buildings and local governments can manage waste collection through its mobile app.
Rekosistem raised $5m in seed capital in 2023 from investors including venture firms Skystar Capital and East Ventures as well as investment group Provident Capital Partners.
Location: Singapore
Founded: 2021
Funding to date: $4.3m
Lithium-ion batteries are essential for cleantech products such as electric vehicles, but they need to be recycled so that the rare earth metals they use can be reused, reducing the need for mining new material. Only a small percentage of them are, and existing methods require large quantities of energy and heat.
Singapore’s NEU Battery Materials has developed an electrochemical recycling system for lithium-ion batteries, using only water and electricity for a method it claims is scalable, less harmful to the environment, while also being a more commercially viable alternative.
Domestic recycling firm Se-cure Waste Management co-led a $580,000 round for NEU in 2022, before the company added $3.7m the following year in a seed round featuring transport group ComfortDelGro’s $100m venture arm.
Location: UK
Founded: 2019
Funding to date: $1.6m
A range of companies are working on alternative leathers right now, mainly by sourcing new materials, such as the mushroom-based myocilin. Biophilica is using green waste from urban parks and gardens, as well as agricultural feedstock that is inedible.
Treekind, the company’s vegan leather alternative, is recyclable and home-compostable and it can be used for everything from packaging to watch straps, jewellery and fashion accessories. The startup has since added an adhesive product called Brightbond.
Biophilica’s funding is so far made up of about $1.6m in seed financing raised in 2022 from backers including venture firm Rhapsody Venture Partners.
Location: Magdeburg, Germany
Founded: 2021
Funding to date: $16.1m
The energy transition is presenting its own recycling challenges and Solar Materials is focusing on solar panels, which is appropriate given that its home country of Germany has installed roughly as much solar energy as the next three European countries combined.
Solar Materials estimates it can recover and recycle 98% of the raw materials in solar panels, including glass, aluminium, silicon, silver, copper and plastics, using thermo-mechanical technology instead of chemicals.
The startup secured approximately $2.8m in an early 2023 seed round and added $13.3m in a series A funding from investors including BMP Ventures, IBG funds, First Imagine and Katapult in May 2024. It is preparing to open an industrial-sized plant next year that will increase recycling capacity to more than 500,000 solar panels per year.
Location: Chicago, US
Founded: 2021
Funding to date: Undisclosed
Nuclear power has always been one of the energy sources with the lowest carbon emissions, as well as enjoying a status as a baseload source. But one of its largest problems has always been safely disposing of the waste.
Alpha Nur is attempting to mitigate the problem by developing technology that will be able to recycle and dilute spent nuclear fuel so it can be recycled. The electrochemical process concentrates on molten salt.
Alpha Nur was part of the University of Chicago’s cleantech accelerator, Resurgence, in 2023. It has joined the Cradle to Commerce Program and won first place in the department’s Office of Nuclear Energy EnergyTech University Technology Bonus Prize.
Location: Chicago, US
Founded: 2022
Funding to date: $100,000+
Although materials such as paper and plastic are routinely collected and recycled from homes, food waste remains underutilised. Demi runs a home composting service designed for urban customers, making pick-up easier and incorporating social and reward elements.
Demi provides containers to residents of apartment blocks who can then deposit them in bins in the lobby of their building. It takes care of the composting itself in partnership with community organisations and compost processors.
The startup entered Gener8tor’s Sustainability Accelerator in 2023, picking up $100,000 in financing in the process, and unconfirmed online sources place its funding at between $800,000 and $850,000.
Location: Graz, Austria
Founded: 2016
Funding to date: $21.5m
It is not just metals from used electronic devices that need to be recycled, there is also the scrap metal that gets produced as a by-product in industrial manufacturing. Metaloop is tapping into that market with an online marketplace for scrap metal.
The company has links to smelters as well as recyclers and can connect them to customers who need to dispose of their scrap. It handles logistics and payment, and launched a cloud platform last August that lets businesses manage their metal scrap through a central hub.
Power producer Statkraft was among the investors in a $17m series A round for Metaloop in 2023 that was led by FirstMark Capital and has a board seat and an observer position at the company, having backed it since seed stage.
Oil and gas companies took part in startup funding rounds with a total value of $1.58bn in the first quarter of 2025, a 50% increase on the same period last year.
The jump was mostly the result of one large fundraising – a $537m series C financing found for Kobold Metals, which uses AI and data modelling to locate metals used in electric vehicles. The round had backing from Norway-based energy company Equinor.
Global Corporate Venturing tracked 34 venturing rounds backed by oil and gas companies in the first quarter of this year. The number of deals increased 13% from the 30 rounds in the first quarter of 2024.
Cleantech continued to be the standout subsector for corporate venture investment by oil and gas companies in Q1, much like most of last year. Corporate-backed funding rounds in cleantech investments increased 21% compared with the same quarter of 2024.
Cleantech was the only subsector that grew in investment volume from 2024, with other subsectors, such as IT and transport, either falling or staying the same.
Carbon capture, energy storage and hydrogen technologies continued to account for most of the cleantech funding rounds backed by oil and gas companies in Q1.
Investments in mobility startups saw the biggest fall in numbers. In the transport sector, automotive technology – especially related to electric vehicles – logistics and various mobility-related services were the most popular investments in 2024, although there was only one such deal in Q1 2025.
Please note that these peer group figures will differ significantly from the figures we have reported and cited in previous reports. From the start of 2025, we have moved to using a narrower definition of the oil and gas (O&G) peer group.
The redefined O&G corporate peer group spans 60 corporations involved in the exploration and production of petroleum and natural gas, including independents, as well as global integrated players. The peer group also includes national oil and gas companies, even if primarily focused on oil refining or gas processing, in cases of countries without oil and gas reserves.
Unlike the extended peer group used previously, this narrower group does not include some of the adjacent service companies related to oil and gas.
Like most of last year, futures contracts indicate that markets generally anticipate the WTI oil price to average within the $60 to $80 range, though with broad confidence intervals ranging from $40 to $120.
The latest US Energy Information Agency (EIA) Short Term Energy Outlook report (from early April 2025) expects the Brent benchmark to rise from $70 per barrel to an average of $75 per barrel by Q3 2025, as a result of decreasing crude production in Iran and Venezuela. However, the report expects that global oil inventories will build by the second half of 2025 and subsequently put downward pressure on crude prices. There are also expectations of OPEC+ countries to unwind production cuts and crude production growth from 2026 onwards.
The EIA has also revised its forecasts on natural gas prices even further up than previously and now expects them to rise over the next two years, averaging $4.20/MMBtu (million British thermal units) in 2025 and $4.50 in 2026 (up from $3.10 and $4.00 forecast previously). This is attributed to an expected rise in consumption and demand, accompanied by a fall in global natural gas inventories.
Oil and gas majors Saudi Aramco and Equinor were investors in the largest funding rounds by dollar size in the first quarter of 2025, which were for startups focused on cleantech areas such as carbon capture and hydrogen, but also sectors including AI automation and robotics, as well as mining and healthtech.
Mining company KoBold Metals closed a $537m series C round, featuring oil and gas major Equinor. Other investors included Andreessen Horowitz, Bond, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Earthshot VC, July Fund, Mitsubishi, Standard Investments, StepStone, WCM Investment. The capital from this new funding round, which was led by Durable Capital Partners and T. Rowe Price, will be used to help build a multibillion-dollar mine to exploit a copper deposit it found using AI. KoBold is working on AI, big data and statistical modelling-driven digital exploration technology that enables miners to locate the metals used for electric vehicle batteries: nickel, copper, cobalt and lithium.
US-based AI acceleration cloud company Together AI raised $305m in a series B round, reportedly at $3.3bn valuation. The round was co-led by General Catalyst and Prosperity7, an investment unit of Saudi Aramco. It also featured global institutional and strategic investors including Salesforce Ventures, DAMAC Capital, Nvidia, Kleiner Perkins, March Capital. Together AI will use the funds to further consolidate its position as an end-to-end platform for building with open-source models.
Laboratory robotics developer Insilico Medicine raised $110m to further develop its AI-powered drug design platforms. The company’s series E financing was led by the Hong Kong-based firm Value Partners and was joined by Insilico’s previous investors, including Saudi Aramco’s Prosperity7, as well as other corporate investors such as Baidu Ventures and Eli Lilly’s Lilly Asia Ventures. The proceeds from the round will help refine its AI models, as well as support pivotal clinical trials of its lead drug candidate in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
Chinese general-purpose humanoid robot maker Fourier, previously known as Fourier Intelligence, raised $109m in a series E round, sized at almost RMB800m ($109.1m) with support from investors, including Saudi Aramco’s Prosperity7 Ventures. The company disclosed the scale of the round after raising capital across a few tranches throughout 2024 and at the start of 2025. Fourier launched its first mass-produced humanoid robot GR-1 in 2023. In September 2024, Fourier introduced GR-2, the latest addition to its GRx humanoid robot series.
Prosperity7 Ventures led a series pre-A funding round of RMB 528m ($72.8m) for Chinese AI and robotics maker, Spirit AI, amid an increase in early-stage financing in embodied intelligence. Founded in February 2024, Spirit AI will use the new funding to accelerate the iterations of its large language models for embodied AI products, upgrade robotic hardware and recruit talent. The company is set to launch its first high-precision commercial humanoid robot models, Moz1 and VLA Spirit v1, an AI model that Spirit AI claims can allow humanoid robots to perform tasks such as folding laundry.
US-based grid-enhancing technologies developer Smart Wires closed a $65m funding round, which included oil and gas major BP, as well as contributions from The Keystone Group. The company’s technology allows utilities to manage capacity and load issues and has already helped utilities gain nearly 4GW of firm capacity from their existing networks. Its solution can be rapidly deployed, adjusted, or relocated as needed to adapt to changing system demands and accommodate new power generation sources.
Amogy, a developer of ammonia-to-power solutions, received $56m in a venture round, bringing the total raised since inception to more than $270m. The round was co-led by Aramco Ventures and new investor SV Investment. Additional investors include Samsung Heavy Industries and BHP, along with Temasek, MOL Switch (a CVC of Mitsui O.S.K. Lines) and AP Ventures. Amogy’s patented ammonia-powered system splits, or “cracks,” ammonia into its base elements of hydrogen and nitrogen. The hydrogen is then funnelled into a hydrogen-to-power system, either an integrated fuel cell or hydrogen engine, generating high-performance power with zero carbon emissions.
Finland-based hydrogen producer Hycamite TCD Technologies secured €44m ($45.2m) in a two-tranche series A investment from strategic and financial investors. The round, led by Sojitz Group, featured oil company OMV Petrom, part of the OMV Group, alongside existing investors including Holdix, Turret and Stephen Industries. MOL PLUS also joined the investment. Hycamite produces low-carbon hydrogen and carbon products by splitting methane using proprietary zero-emission technology based on thermo-catalytic decomposition.
Spain-based hydrogen H2Site closed its series B funding round at €36m ($37m) from a large group of investors, including Equinor Ventures, MassMutual Ventures and Enagas Emprende. Founded in 2019, H2site has developed a proprietary membrane reactor technology that enables hydrogen extraction from gas streams and transport-friendly molecules such as ammonia and methanol. The company has already implemented 15 projects across western Europe.
US-based direct air capture technology developer Spiritus raised a $30m series A funding round, led by Aramco Ventures, which was joined by Khosla Ventures, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America and TDK Ventures. Proceeds from the round will be used to boost Spiritus’ mission to eliminate carbon emissions from the built and energy economies.
Global Corporate Venturing tracked two exits from companies previously backed by oil and gas corporates in Q1 2025.
Singapore-headquartered AI-based consumer goods platform AI Palette was acquired for an undisclosed sum by UK-based GlobalData. The company was previously backed by Thailand’s state-owned oil and gas company PTT. The acquisition aligns with GlobalData’s strategy to enhance its AI capabilities and expand its reach in the consumer packaged goods industry. Founded in 2018, AI Palette provides a multimodal AI-powered platform for the CPG
industry, including F&B, beauty and personal care and nutraceutical products.
Hatla2ee
UAE-based Dubizzle Group, a classifieds website, acquired Hatla2ee, an online car marketplace in Egypt that previously attracted backing from Moroccan oil and gas giant Akwa Group. Since its launch in 2016, Hatla2ee has grown into a leading platform for Egyptians seeking to buy and sell both new and used vehicles.
Global Corporate Venturing reported only one oil and gas-related funding initiative involving corporate investors in the energy sector in the first quarter of 2025, and it was a shutdown.
Brazilian petrochemical company Braskem announced its plans to shut its corporate venturing unit, Oxygea Ventures. Oxygea Ventures was set up as a $150m independent venture fund in 2022 to make minority equity investments and fund internally built ventures. Oxygea was considered one of the most active CVCs in Latin America.
Corporate venturers who moved jobs in the first quarter of 2025.
Carlos Kokron joined SE Ventures, the CVC arm of French utility company Schneider Electric, as general partner. This move came after nearly 13 years of working in corporate venturing for the US fabless semiconductor multinational Qualcomm. Kokron joined the company in 2012 as vice-president and managing director, responsible for ventures and new business development for Latin America. In 2018, he moved to Qualcomm Ventures, the CVC arm, where he led the Americas investment team. His role as an investor with Qualcomm Ventures meant taking a board seat on a number of portfolio companies, including Span, which makes home energy storage systems, and AiFi, a company using an AI-powered retail platform. With SE Ventures, he joined a fund sized at more than $1bn, with 35 portfolio companies around the world, most of which are in the US. It invests in climate and industrial technology startups. Last year, SE Ventures participated in the $53m series B funding round for Higharc, a home-building automation platform provider, and the $59m series C round for AiDash, which uses AI to make critical infrastructure industries climate resilience.
Takeshi Kodama, recipient of a 2024 GCV Powerlist award, has moved from 31Ventures, the corporate venture subsidiary he set up for Japanese property developer Mitsui Fudosan, to oversee energy utility JERA’s investment activities. Kodama will lead the $300m CVC fund at JERA Ventures, replacing Ken Ohyama, who established the fund in mid-2023. Ohyama has not revealed details of his future plans. Kodama has been at Mitsui Fudosan for almost 30 years, rising to run mergers and acquisitions in 2011, before launching 31Ventures as executive manager in 2015. He was promoted to head of business strategy and investment in April 2024. The move came two months after 31Ventures principal Yusuke Shioyama moved to JERA Ventures to take on a senior manager role. Mitsui Fudosan has not disclosed who will be taking over leadership at 31Ventures. JERA Ventures invests in startups developing cleantech technology, products that enhance employee well-being in areas such as femtech and digital technologies centred on energy and its new use cases. The unit’s portfolio so far stands at four startups, including CO2 emissions monitoring startup Asuene and hydrogen transportation technology developer Immaterial, as well as five fund-to-fund commitments.
Mitch Gainer joined NextEra Energy after two years at Yield Capital Partners. “My role will focus on connecting early-stage energy innovation from the venture ecosystem with NextEra’s industry-leading capabilities,” he said in a LinkedIn post. NextEra Energy Investments backs startups in energy technologies such as renewable energy, hydrogen, mobility and decarbonisation. It also invests in enterprise software startups focused on cybersecurity, digital infrastructure, cloud computing, customer service, software-as-a-service and AI. Its portfolio includes low-carbon synthetic e-fuels manufacturer Infinium, land-leasing platform provider for renewable energy Landgate, and carbon black and hydrogen technology developer Monolith. Gainer spent two years as partner at investment management company Yield Capital Partners, where he led due diligence on climate tech and digital infrastructure. He previously spent two years as principal and associate partner at Activate Consulting, which followed a prior stint as senior associate at Yield Capital Partners.
Andrea Sguazzi joined venture building services provider Mind the Bridge after spending nine years at Italian electricity company Enel Group in various innovation roles. Sguazzi will head venture builder and startup programmes at Mind the Bridge, which works with startups and large companies to build commercial ventures. Sguazzi most recently led Enel Group’s innovation hub in San Francisco, where he created collaborations between startups and the parent company. Enel Group has 10 innovation hubs around the world where it provides physical space for startups to present projects to Enel. In his new role, Sguazzi will work to expand Mind the Bridge’s global operations and strengthen its open R&D and venture builder services.
Anke Gratz joined EnBW New Ventures, the corporate VC arm of German energy company Energie Baden-Württemberg AG, as investment manager. Gratz was a former senior associate on the investment team at The DeepTech & Climate Fund, a German VC firm, and a senior project manager at Swedish multinational energy company Vattenfall. EnBW New Ventures focuses on European startups developing smart infrastructure solutions in sustainability, battery storage, electric mobility, carbon management and cybersecurity. The unit invests in series A+ rounds with a cheque size between €1m and €10m.
Susan Heerings left her role as legal counsel at Eneco Ventures, the corporate venture arm of energy provider Eneco, to join renewable energy investment firm Meewind as an investment manager. Heerings joined Eneco Ventures in 2018, following legal roles at CorporateWise and pharmaceutical company Teva.
Brady Beauchamp, who had been director at GE Vernova Ventures, the corporate VC arm of energy equipment manufacturer GE Vernova, since mid-2023, left the unit to become managing director of fund management firm Itinerant. He was with the CVC nearly as long as the corporate parent – a spin-off of General Electric’s power and renewables businesses – has been around. It invests in startups in electrification, decarbonisation and renewable energy. The unit’s portfolio includes water-from-air technology producer AirJoule Technology, AI-powered energy management technology developer ThinkLabs AI, and battery technology startup Form Energy. Before joining GE Vernova, Beauchamp was an investment partner at VC firm Moore Venture Partners for two years. Before that he did a year-long stint as chief operating officer at Debut Biotechnology, a synthetic biology biomanufacturing platform, which he also co-founded. Prior roles include investment principal at NextWave Ventures, investment associate at Goldman Sachs and a submarine officer in the US Navy.
Andrea Course stepped down from her role as digital innovation programme manager at Shell Ventures, the corporate venture arm of oil and gas giant Shell. Course had initially joined the unit as a venture principal, focusing on sourcing investments in robotics, AI and machine learning. In 2023, she was promoted to lead the digital innovation programme.
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