Japan-headquartered automotive manufacturer Toyota committed another $300m in capital to its corporate venturing unit yesterday, also rebranding it from Toyota AI Ventures to Toyota Ventures.
Toyota AI Ventures had been launched under the auspices of the company’s Toyota Research Institute in 2017 with $100m in capital. Toyota subsequently provided a further $100m for its Fund II in late 2019.
The capital will be divided evenly between two funds. One of those, Toyota Ventures Climate Fund, will concentrate on developers of innovative technologies to promote carbon neutrality, such as renewable energy and hydrogen production.
Toyota Ventures Frontier Fund will invest in developers of technology in areas like artificial intelligence, cloud computing, autonomy, mobility, robotics, smart cities, digital health, advanced materials, energy and financial technology.
Jim Adler, Toyota Ventures’ founding managing director, said: “Startups are tackling the world’s challenges, and at Toyota Ventures we want to open even more paths to investing in them.
“Since we started our first fund four years ago, we’ve been on a journey with our portfolio companies to discover what is next for Toyota and for the world. Today, we are thrilled to be embarking on the next leg of that journey with the Frontier and the Climate Funds.”
The US-based unit’s portfolio includes Joby Aviation, the vertical take-off and landing craft developer that agreed a $6.6bn reverse takeover in February this year, and Nauto, the autonomous driving software developer that closed a $159m series B round in 2017.
