Typically, Michiko Kato thinks again on the good challenges of her life.
She as soon as dropped all the pieces in her native metropolis of Tokyo to attend Harvard Enterprise College in Massachusetts. Sooner or later, she determined to depart her profession within the steady world of finance to enter the rocky terrain of startup life. That bounce is what modified all the pieces.
On Wednesday, Kato formally assumes her biggest problem but — CIO of Toyota’s Woven Capital and CEO of Toyota Invention Companions. The latter appointment makes her the primary feminine CEO of a completely owned Toyota subsidiary.
Woven Capital is the growth-stage enterprise capital arm of Toyota, focused on backing founders constructing in mobility (together with house, cybersecurity, and autonomous driving). It final introduced an $800 million Fund II in August final 12 months (Fund I, additionally at a $800 million, launched in 2021), with plans to again not less than 20 new Collection B investments. Corporations in its portfolio embody the satellite tv for pc firm Xona and the protection manufacturing infrastructure firm Machina Labs.
The agency seeks to seek out the “future chief of mobility,” she mentioned, and goals to select corporations which are “collaboration companions with Toyota.”
“We are able to co-lead, we will make small investments, or we will do an aggressive funding; we attempt to be versatile,” she mentioned. And as for her? “I wish to be hands-on. I wish to be useful to startups. And, I wish to actually deal with the partnership creation.”
Kato this week just isn’t alone in her promotion on the agency. Mia Panzer can also be shifting from her enterprise technique function at considered one of Toyota’s expertise subsidiaries to turn into COO of Woven Capital. Which means not one however two of the highest roles at this company VC (CVC) agency will likely be held by girls, a sign of how the male-dominated world of finance and investments is progressing.
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Traditionally, girls have achieved (solely a bit of bit) higher at climbing the ranks at CVCs than at conventional enterprise corporations. The final concrete information, nonetheless, comes from a 2014 CBI report that mentioned that rather less than 20% of the highest CVCs had girls on their investing groups. The quantity was in contrast, on the time, to the truth that solely 7% of companions on the high 100 enterprise corporations had been girls.
As we speak, in enterprise, that number hovers around 15.4%, suggesting the share of girls in funding roles at CVCs has elevated, too.
Kato joined the agency again in 2020 as one of many 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 total, together with on the M&A group at Unison Capital and as CFO for the Japanese AI startup ABEJA. Since becoming a member of Woven, she’s led six investments (together with an undisclosed one) into startups just like the reusable rocket firm Stoke and the autonomous car firm Nuro, her first funding. She’s most excited by aeromobility, bodily AI, and {hardware}. “I feel we will essentially remodel the way in which manufacturing is finished,” she mentioned of her imaginative and prescient for the CVC.
Working alongside her will likely be Panzer, within the newly fashioned COO function. She’s going to be taking up finance, operations, HR, and authorized technique. She mentioned there are two issues each CVC is at all times nervous about — a company slowdown that kills offers and misalignment with the guardian firm. “My job is to basically assist with creating this by way of,” she mentioned.
She’s been working with Ro Gupta, Woven Capital’s managing director, since his days constructing the mapping firm Digital camera again in 2019. She joined that startup whereas three months pregnant along with her first child to run finance. Beforehand, she was at Goldman after which on the pet wellness firm Unbiased Pet Companions (IPP). She mentioned she wasn’t actually seeking to go away her job at IPP however determined to provide Gupta and Digital camera an opportunity.
“I actually like being a part of the startup world,” she mentioned.
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 back to Gupta.
At first, Panzer didn’t suppose she was absolutely certified, however then she thought of how girls at all times say they aren’t absolutely certified for a job, whereas males simply bounce in and do it. She considered a profession stuffed with assumptions about her, from the school recruiter who didn’t suppose she would have technical information as a result of she was a lady, to the pal at Goldman who advised her she wasn’t his competitors for promotion as a result of she was a lady.
She determined to only bounce in, too.
“We speak lots in regards to the Japanese idea of ikigai the place you deal with looking for one thing you’re good at, what you’re keen on, what the world wants, and what you will get paid for,” she mentioned, including that it feels full circle as generations of her household have labored in automotive elements. “I at all times say to different girls, ‘Allow them to have low expectations,” she mentioned. “Straightforward to overdeliver.’”
