Michael Young has been director of Caterpillar Ventures, the corporate venturing subsidiary of construction equipment maker Caterpillar, since the unit’s launch in June 2015.
Caterpillar Ventures makes strategic investments in early-stage companies with a cheque size between $500,000 to $5m to support entrepreneurs globally to foster and grow their businesses with Caterpillar’s industry knowledge, resources and dealer network.
The unit targets startups in distributed power, analytics, robotics, additive manufacturing and business models to seek out synergies. Among its recent investments are a role in the $16m series B round for BrightVolt, while in 2021, Caterpillar Ventures was among the investors that backed a $220m private investment in public equity financing for the reverse takeover conducted by its portfolio company Sarcos Robotics, an industrial robotics technology manufacturer.
Sarcos joined special purpose acquisition company Rotor Acquisition Corp in a transaction that would later value the merged entity, Sarcos Technology, at a combined $1.3bn.
Before joining the unit, Young had been a director of corporate strategy at Caterpillar for three years where he was involved in the company’s five-year strategic plan called 2020 Vision. During that time, Young was also in charge of M&A where he carried out 12 transactions in both the US and Asia-Pacific.
He also served seven years as Caterpillar’s China-based director of business development of Asia-Pacific, including joint venture and M&A, in Beijing. Before that, he had worked at computing technology manufacturer Dell from 1995 to 2001, holding multiple roles in the US, Singapore, Hong Kong and mainland China.
Young has a bachelor’s degree from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville as well as an MBA from St Louis University.
