Airbus Group, a Netherlands-based multinational aerospace and defence corporation, has shaken up its corporate venturing leadership and appointed François Auque and Thomas d’Halluin to lead the European and US venture investment activities, respectively.
Their appointment followed the departure of Tim Dombrowski, CEO of Airbus Ventures, and its partner, Heikki Mäkijärvi, who said, via his LinkedIn profile, he had left “after Airbus Group changed its venture capital strategy, changed commitment to Airbus Ventures and Sand Hill Road office was closed”.
Dombrowski was unavailable but d’Halluin by email confirmed he was “no longer working at Airbus Ventures”. Dylan Gale, an associate at Airbus Ventures until August, has this month joined cable group Comast’s corporate venturing team to cover “AR/VR, IOT, and frontier technologies,” he said on his LinkedIn profile.
Auque was previously CEO of Airbus Group’s Airbus Defence and Space division in France and executive vice-president of space systems. D’Halluin was formerly chief operating officer of Airbus Ventures having earlier been chief financial officer.
Several additional hires have been made in North America and Europe and more are expected by the end of the year, Airbus said. The recruits this year have included Maryanna Saenko, based in Silicon Valley, who previously led Lux Research’s autonomous systems group; Anabelle Oliveira, based in Paris, France, who had worked with Auque at Airbus Defence and Space; and Matthieu Repellin, also based in Paris, who spent 13 years in the semiconductor industry at STMicroelectronics before joining Airbus in 2013 and latterly working at its A3 innovation centre.
In late May 2015, Airbus Group announced its intention to set up in Silicon Valley, California, by creating an independent venture capital fund, Airbus Ventures, and an innovation centre called A3 with a combined $150m commitment. Its initial portfolio companies in the US have been Local Motors, Parsable and QCWare.
In other recent personnel shifts, Paul Eremenko, the founding CEO of A3, has stepped up to be the chief technology officer of Airbus Group, the parent company of Airbus, Airbus Helicopters, and Airbus Defence and Space.
Rodin Lyasoff is now CEO of A3, with Eduardo Dominguez Puerta as deputy CEO and chief operating officer since January.
Harald Wilhelm, chief financial officer at Airbus Group, which has sales of nearly $70bn, said: “We trust that the Airbus Ventures activities around the world will achieve both a financial and strategic return for Airbus Group. Having a focus on emerging entrepreneurs in our industry keeps us on the front line of new opportunities for both our business and those of our partners.”