George Ugras replaced Claudia Fan Munce as head of US-listed technology provider IBM’s corporate venturing unit after she announced her retirement from IBM in January last year during the Global Corporate Venturing & Innovation Summit.
For Ugras’s Powerlist award, his CEO, Ginni Rometty, said: “IBM Ventures is essential to how we engage entrepreneurs and developers who are building innovative applications and technologies for cognitive solutions and cloud platforms. I am delighted to have George leading our efforts to amplify this essential component of IBM’s strategy.”
Ugras, who last summer joined the board of the corporate venture capital group of US-based trade body the National Venture Capital Association, said: “We are aiming to be one of the leaders in the new approach to corporate venturing. IBM Ventures is the application programming interface for IBM for the startup community.
“Our goal is to impact every aspect of our business – how we deliver products and services to our clients, ensuring innovation that now is being distributed across so many great startups is accessed by us and by our clients.”
As well as GCV Rising Star Wendy Lung, Ugras has been building his team, including the hire of Christoph Auer-Welsbach, a partner of IBM Ventures, from January.
Ugras’s career in the venture capital arena started at Apax Partners in New York, where he invested in early-stage technology companies. He subsequently moved to Silicon Valley and was a partner at Adams Capital Management, where he funded and helped to launch and run a number of companies in the enterprise sector.
In 2014, Ugras launched life sciences company CyteGen, funded by Thiel’s Breakout Labs. CyteGen is tackling neurodegenerative diseases. Ugras has been an adviser to a number of incubators, startups, corporate and financial venture funds.