Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Toyota Ventures is Toyota’s first standalone early-stage venture capital firm.
Through the Toyota Ventures Frontier Fund, we invest in artificial intelligence, autonomy, mobility, robotics, cloud technology, smart cities, digital health, fintech, energy, and materials. As part of Toyota’s ongoing efforts to accelerate carbon dioxide reduction, we also invest in startups that are creating scalable solutions for carbon neutrality, as part of the Toyota Ventures Climate Fund.
We are on a mission to explore what’s next by helping early-stage startups bring disruptive technologies and business models to market quickly. As we pursue this goal, we are committed to finding and funding the best entrepreneurs from around the world. We value different approaches and points of view, and believe diversity drives innovation.
How we work
Leveraging the deep technical expertise and global resources of Toyota, our team offers Toyota Ventures portfolio companies strategic support and operational guidance in business development, product, fundraising, marketing, executive coaching, and other areas. We are also dedicated to embracing and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts within our portfolio and the larger VC industry through efforts like the Diversity VC Standard.
The entrepreneurs who partner with us receive much more than money. Their success is our success, and we support them at every step of their journey — while giving them the freedom and flexibility they need to experiment and grow their businesses. We look for both financial returns and strategic value, and firmly believe that financial returns must precede strategic value.
We look for innovators who have the courage, humility, and tenacity to tackle important challenges we have yet to solve. It’s the same spirit of innovation that inspired Toyota founder Kiichiro Toyoda and his team to devote themselves to transforming Toyota from a loom maker to an automotive manufacturer in the 1930’s. And it is this same vision that continues to drive Toyota today.
If you are the founder of an early-stage company developing solutions in other areas we invest in and you’re looking for funding, you are also invited to complete our online pitch form. For those who are seeking growth-stage capital, we encourage you to visit our colleagues at Woven Capital, the growth-stage investment fund of Woven Planet.