Bruce Niven became chief investment officer at Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures last year and has worked at the unit for more than three years. He was previously director of clean-tech venturing and corporate development at Japan-based trading and investment company Itochu. Before that he was founder and managing director of mass interactive events application company Telepathix and a project manager at Omega Partners Strategy Consultants. Niven studied engineering and management at Oxford University in the UK. He is a chartered financial analyst.
He said last year: “The aim is to develop [Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures] into a large-scale, world-class corporate venturing programme. Key challenges as I see it are scaling the venture capital model effectively across a global team, optimising corporate interactions to make better decisions and add value to both investees and the parent company, and leveraging advanced information systems to enhance the corporate venturing operation.”
He added: “We have closed 10 deals to date. These were three fund investments plus Sekal, a software company for real-time decision support and automation in drilling operations, Zilift, a downhole pumps company using permanent magnet motors and transmissions, Rive Technologies, a mesoporous zeolite catalysts company, Antech, a directional coiled tubing drilling systems company, and Inflow Control, an autonomous downhole valves for fluid flow control company.”
Niven said the unit had two further deals set to be announced by year-end.