Last quarter capped off a year that saw venture investments by oil and gas companies start to recover from what was a nearly 50% collapse in dollars invested between 2022 and 2024.

Despite energy being an industry that showed remarkable resilience, at least in terms of deal flow, on the heels of the venture market contracting, oil and gas companies in particular had tightened the purse strings significantly, going from $8.82bn in 2022 to $4.65bn. In 2025, they ended up pumping just over $6bn into startups, the most since 2023.

Oil and gas companies’ investment in cleantech startups picked up again in 2025, after a significant fall in 2024. Oil and gas companies made more investments in emerging companies in this area, roughly similar to levels seen in 2021.

This is despite some big names in the industry, including BP, Equinor and Shell, signalling they would be easing off the cleantech throttle. Nonetheless, cleantech remains the sub-segment with the most deals by far across 2025.

One of the biggest cleantech deals was the $300m series D funding round for nuclear microreactor technology developer Radiant, which saw participation from Chevron. These alternative energy deals, however, are heavily driven by an interest in sourcing new energy sources to power data centres, rather than just by sustainability motivations.

Q1 was the liveliest quarter for cleantech investments, while the rest of the year showed more hesitance by oil and gas companies to back startups in this area.

US-based cleantech startups still accounted for nearly half – five of 11 – cleantech investments by the oil and gas company peer group in the fourth quarter, and roughly a quarter of the cleantech deals in 2025, despite a much less favourable environment for cleantech companies in the US, as the Trump administration rolls back subsidies, grants and tax incentives for renewables and electric vehicles.

Transport delays

Transport and mobility startups have seen a collapse in interest from oil and gas companies. One has to go back to 2016 to find less investment. From last year alone, investment numbers have cratered by more than 50%, from 20 to eight. One notable deal in the fourth quarter, however, was BP backing UK-based autonomous driving platform Oxa.

The fourth quarter was the weakest in 2025 in terms of dollars invested, but this was still 50% higher than investment totals in Q4 2024. Fewer but larger deals in the last quarter of 2025 lifted the dollar total.

While the median size of the rounds backed by peer group companies in 2025 was slightly lower than they were in 2024 at $20.50m compared with $21.70m, the average was more than 40% higher than 2024, going from $46.08m to $65.61m. Oil and gas companies were more selective in the startups they backed, but spent more on those they did support.

Looking at individual oil and gas companies’ investments during the past decade, cleantech emerges as a key focus for most, apart from Saudi Aramco, which saw a larger number of investments in IT-related startups.

Although Saudi Aramco has a $1.5bn sustainability fund, one of the largest in the industry, it focuses more attention on technologies such as AI and cybersecurity. This was the case in 2025, too, with half of Aramco’s 44 investments during the year in IT. These included backing startups such as cybersecurity technology developer Axiado, AI-powered speech automation platform provider Uniphore Software and AI model developer Humain.

The collapse of energy companies’ interest in the transportation space has yet to show real signs of a turnaround. While there has been no year-on-year change in the number of transport and mobility investments by the peer group in Q4, it caps the weakest year of transport-related venture investments in the past half-decade, with only eight rounds backed through the course of the year.

A few investments bucking that trend, in addition to BP’s investment in Oxa, include Japanese energy conglomerate Eneos backing Japanese autonomous electric vehicle developer Turing and Saudi Aramco backing Chinese low-altitude air transport vehicle developer Aerofugia.