France-based oil and gas provider TotalEnergies has closed its $400m corporate venture capital unit and is selling its portfolio to venture capital firm Aster, Pitchbook reported yesterday.
The move comes a year after Francois Badoual, Total’s vice-president of acceleration and venturing, told Global Corporate Venturing the company was switching focus to its early-stage accelerator programme, TotalEnergies On, while maintaining relationships with its existing portfolio.
The Total Carbon Neutrality Ventures team has since splintered. Unit president Girish Nadkarni left TotalEnergies in March 2022 and was followed out of the company by managing director Ademidun Edosomwan and investment director Edouard Bulteau in September, principal Ugo Catry the following month and managing director Cindi Choi in February of this year.
Another managing director, Severine Lalande, has moved to a different role within TotalEnergies, as have head of business development Marc Fischer, investment manager Reza Nejad and principal Thuy Bui.
Founded in the second half of the 2000’s as Total Ventures, to invest in energy technology, the fund underwent several rebrands, finally landing on Total Carbon Neutrality Ventures in 2019 to reflect its focus on low-carbon energy startups.
Aster, which was originally formed by corporates Schneider Electric and Alstom, will acquire a portfolio that includes low-carbon cement producer Solidia, distributed renewable energy provider Zola Electric and freight transporter OnTruck.
It is unclear how profitable the unit was, however. Although TotalEnergies’ CVC exits included flotations for energy storage system provider Stem and sugar-based fuel supplier Amyris, both companies are trading at a fraction of their peak share price and below the price in their respective IPOs.
Photos courtesy of TotalEnergies SE
