Toyota’s Woven Capital appoints new CIO and COO in push for finding the ‘future of mobility’

Toyota’s Woven Capital appoints new CIO and COO in push for finding the ‘future of mobility’

Sometimes, Michiko Kato thinks again on the nice challenges of her life. 

She as soon as dropped all the things in her native metropolis of Tokyo to attend Harvard Business School in Massachusetts. One day, she determined to go away her profession in the steady world of finance to enter the rocky terrain of startup life. That bounce is what modified all the things. 

On Wednesday, Kato formally assumes her best challenge yet — CIO of Toyota’s Woven Capital and CEO of Toyota Invention Partners. The latter appointment makes her the first feminine CEO of a completely owned Toyota subsidiary. 

Woven Capital is the growth-stage enterprise capital arm of Toyota, centered on backing founders constructing in mobility (including house, cybersecurity, and autonomous driving). It last announced an $800 million Fund II in August last 12 months (Fund I, also at a $800 million, launched in 2021), with plans to again a minimum of 20 new Series B investments. Companies in its portfolio embrace the satellite tv for pc company Xona and the protection manufacturing infrastructure company Machina Labs. 

The agency seeks to search out the “future leader of mobility,” she said, and goals to select corporations that are “collaboration partners with Toyota.”

“We can co-lead, we can make small investments, or we can do an aggressive investment; we try to be flexible,” she said. And as for her? “I want to be hands-on. I want to be valuable to startups. And, I want to really focus on the partnership creation.” 

Kato this week isn’t alone in her promotion at the agency. Mia Panzer is also shifting from her enterprise strategy position at one of Toyota’s technology subsidiaries to grow to be COO of Woven Capital. That means not one however two of the top roles at this company VC (CVC) agency shall be held by women, a sign of how the male-dominated world of finance and investments is progressing.

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Historically, women have achieved (only somewhat bit) better at climbing the ranks at CVCs than at conventional enterprise corporations. The last concrete data, however, comes from a 2014 CBI report that said that somewhat less than 20% of the top CVCs had women on their investing groups. The quantity was in contrast, at the time, to the fact that only 7% of companions at the top 100 enterprise corporations had been women.

Today, in enterprise, that quantity hovers round 15.4%, suggesting the proportion of women in funding roles at CVCs has elevated, too. 

Kato joined the agency again in 2020 as one of the first new hires for what was then the newly spun-out Woven Capital. (It spun out from an in-house subsidiary of Toyota.) 

She’s spent 15 years in investing general, including on the M&A team at Unison Capital and as CFO for the Japanese AI startup ABEJA. Since becoming a member of Woven, she’s led six investments (including an undisclosed one) into startups like the reusable rocket company Stoke and the autonomous car company Nuro, her first funding. She’s most excited by aeromobility, bodily AI, and {hardware}. “I think we can fundamentally transform the way manufacturing is done,” she said of her imaginative and prescient for the CVC. 

Working alongside her shall be Panzer, in the newly shaped COO position. She’s going to be taking over finance, operations, HR, and authorized strategy. She said there are two issues every CVC is always apprehensive about — a company slowdown that kills offers and misalignment with the father or mother company. “My job is to essentially help with developing this through,” she said. 

She’s been working with Ro Gupta, Woven Capital’s managing director, since his days constructing the mapping company Camera again in 2019. She joined that startup while three months pregnant along with her first child to run finance. Previously, she was at Goldman and then at the pet wellness company Independent Pet Partners (IPP). She said she wasn’t actually seeking to go away her job at IPP however determined to provide Gupta and Camera an opportunity. 

“I really like being part of the startup world,” she said. 

Toyota’s tech subsidiary then bought Carmera (a sale she helped facilitate), and Gupta and Panzer joined that division. In December 2025, he grew to become managing director of Woven Capital and determined to convey Panzer alongside. Kato and Panzer report to Gupta.

At first, Panzer didn’t assume she was absolutely certified, however then she thought about how women always say they aren’t absolutely certified for a job, while males just bounce in and do it. She thought of a profession full of assumptions about her, from the school recruiter who didn’t assume she would have technical information because she was a lady, to the pal at Goldman who told her she wasn’t his competitors for promotion because she was a lady. 

She determined to just bounce in, too.

“We talk a lot about the Japanese concept of ikigai where you focus on trying to find something you’re good at, what you love, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for,” she said, including that it feels full circle as generations of her household have labored in automotive elements. “I always say to other women, ‘Let them have low expectations,” she said. “Easy to overdeliver.’” 

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