Thomas Molleker, senior associate at BMW i Ventures, is one of our top 50 Rising Stars in corporate venturing for 2025.
When Thomas Molleker finished school, he was not sure which of the available career paths in front of him he wanted to take – did he want to pursue physics and engineering, or did he want to go more of a finance and business route?
At first he chose the latter path, pursuing a career in finance by joining growth equity firm Yttrium. Then he came across the chance to merge finance with his interest in the technical side at BMW, where he joined the i Ventures team as associate in 2021, before being promoted to senior associate in 2024.
Molleker’s focus has been primarily on the energy side of mobility – smart charging, enabling technologies such as decentralised energy, energy management and virtual power plants, as well as industry 4.0, robotics, industrial automation and more.
“His dedication, precision and speed are unmatched and he greatly understands the mechanics and politics of the venture space”
“He has managed and supported several promising deals for the European deal team in different parts of Europe,” says BMW i Ventures managing partner Marcus Behrendt. “His dedication, precision and speed are unmatched and he greatly understands the mechanics and politics of the venture space. He truly is a rising star and will become a leader soon.”
One of the things Molleker likes most about being at a corporate VC is being on the frontline of innovation – in a position to know about new disruptive technologies before the rest of the world.
Having joined BMW i Ventures in the context of covid-19 lockdowns, those early days did not feature much networking, which Molleker has since come to value as one of the most important things newcomers to venture must do, with all stakeholders.
“It is important to have a network inside the corporate on the one side, but also, independently of that, to have a strong network with the startup community and your potential co-investors. It is not the one or the other, but it is the mixture of those worlds,” he says.
See the full list of Rising Stars 2025 here.
