Our Next Frontier: Toyota Ventures Climate Fund
By Jim Adler
“Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.” — Greta Thunberg
2021 was a busy year for the Toyota Ventures team. Not only did we change our name in June, we also announced an expanded investment thesis and two new $150M funds. One of these $150M funds is our Toyota Ventures Climate Fund. It’s time for an update.
But first, a quick refresher. While our mission is to discover what’s next for Toyota, our Climate Fund’s objective is to accelerate Toyota’s carbon neutrality goals. Capitalism can be the engine to scale humanity’s fight against carbon and its impact on climate change. And startups are the starter motor for scaling planet-first disruptive technologies and business models into markets.
Recognizing the catalyzing power of sustainable startups early in our journey, Toyota Ventures invested in electric mobility startups Revel, May Mobility and Joby Aviation, as well as in hydrogen logistics company Universal Hydrogen. To accelerate our efforts, we 10x’d our commitment and the Toyota Ventures Climate Fund was born. The Climate Fund’s thesis is to invest in early-stage startups targeting carbon mitigation, adaptation, and removal.
To tackle this planetary challenge head on, we have been busy growing the team. So, I could not be more excited to introduce Lisa Coca, to lead our efforts as Climate Fund partner.
Lisa joined Toyota Ventures last September. She brings a wealth of experience from her time at Intel Capital, where she served as managing director and entrepreneur-in-residence with the company’s emerging growth and incubations division. She was also a founding member of GE Ventures, where she was responsible for launching and leading the enterprise software investment practice, as well as the EDGE program, a platform for portfolio companies to leverage the global scale, expertise, and resources of GE.
Lisa developed her passion for climate as the global sustainability and Ecomagination leader for GE Real Estate where she developed programs to leverage technology and operating practices to reduce the environmental impact of its assets and improve financial performance.
Since joining Toyota Ventures, Lisa has hit the ground running. She has hired two more Climate Fund team members: associate, Ethan Sohn, and analyst, Isay Acenas. They have already made several investments. No spoilers yet, so stay tuned for all the investment news Lisa and team have teed up. If you’re interested in joining us on this journey, our Platform team is also looking for a portfolio engagement lead to support the startups the Climate Fund is investing in.
Moving forward, Lisa will take the reins to introduce new Toyota Ventures Climate Fund investments and share insights into the fund’s thesis. You can read her inaugural blog post here. Don’t worry, you’ll still be hearing from me on Frontier Fund investments, Toyota Ventures news, and other topics I’m burning to discuss. Keeping me quiet is no easy task.
Through innovation, we have the unique opportunity to participate in the reshaping of humanity’s relationship with our planet. At Toyota Ventures, we pride ourselves in supporting founders that are not afraid of this architectural challenge — or in Greta Thunberg’s words, rearchitecting the cathedral from foundation to ceiling. While we might not know exactly what shape it will take, we do know that startups have a history of catalyzing foundational shifts. And our planet needs some of that about now.
