Kai Martin joined US-based oil services provider Baker Hughes’ New Energy Frontiers team as a corporate development lead at the start of 2022.
The unit, which was set up by Baker Hughes vice-president Luca Maria Rossi in 2020 with Lauren Burke and Chris Barkey, aims to help the parent company make the transition to providing cleaner, safer and more efficient forms of energy by investing in, and collaborating with, innovative early-stage businesses.
Martin said: “In this investment and incubator arm, my role is focused on identifying growth opportunities through emerging new technologies and startups that advance the energy transition and decarbonisation of industry.”
New Frontiers’ most recent deals include the $80m series A round for Ekona Power, a company using methane from livestock to produce clean hydrogen and electrical power, as well as a role in Augury’s $180m series E round in November 2021 that helped push the machine monitoring technology provider’s valuation past $1bn.
At the GCV Symposium in October, Rossi told the Global Corporate Venturing Symposium in October 2021 there was unlikely in future to be one single energy source that covers every application. Instead, he said: “We will need a multi-source approach. Many of the up-and-coming technologies like next-generation nuclear and hydrogen are not ready for widescale use yet.”
Previously, Martin had handled corporate development for AneCom AeroTest, a Germany-based service provider for the aero engine and gas turbine industry.
He has an MBA from the University of Technology Sydney in Australia, as well as bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Stuttgart.
