Energy Company YPF Launches YPF Ventures

YPF LogoYPF, an Argentinian energy company with $15B in revenue and 21 thousand employees, has launched YPF Ventures, a corporate venture capital fund that will expand the company’s reach into emerging energy businesses.

YPF Ventures combines a typical early stage venture capital fund with a growth equity vehicle. This second vehicle helps innovative energy companies in the US expand into Latin America by leveraging YPF’s role as an energy leader with a significant retail footprint and in-market presence in Latin America.

The two funds operate as follows:
– The bridge fund links the hubs where energy innovation takes place (starting with the San Francisco Bay Area) and Latin America.
– The seed fund seeks to build and promote an ecosystem of innovation in Latin America. This fund will double the available capital for cleantech entrepreneurs in Latin America (currently only $2M a year).

Led by Managing Director Tomas Ocampo, a former entrepreneur who earned an MBA from Stanford University in 2015 and an MS in Energy from Stanford in 2016, and Sergio Giorgi, YPF’s head of Business Development, Strategy and Investor Relations, who serves as President for the fund, YPF Ventures has already invested in two companies:
– Sustentator, Argentina’s distributed solar generation leader, and
– Bird Technologies, a urban micro-mobility company that provides short distance personal mobility services by distributing electric scooters in big cities.

FinSMEs

10/07/2019

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