Sometimes Michiko Kato recalls the great difficulties she faced in her life.
She even left everything in her hometown of Tokyo to attend Harvard Business School in Massachusetts. One day, she decided to pursue a career in the established world of finance and enter the rugged terrain of startup life. That jump changed everything.
On Wednesday, Kato officially took on his biggest challenge: CIO of Toyota Woven Capital and CEO of Toyota Invention Partners. The latter appointment made her the first female CEO of a wholly owned Toyota subsidiary.
Woven Capital is Toyota’s growth-stage venture capital arm, focused on supporting startups in the mobility (including space, cybersecurity and autonomous driving) sectors. It last announced the $800 million Fund II in August last year (Fund I will also launch in 2021 with $800 million), and plans to support at least 20 new Series B investments. Its portfolio includes satellite company Xona and defense manufacturing infrastructure company Machina Labs.
She said the company is looking for “future leaders in mobility” and aims to select companies that “will become collaborative partners with Toyota.”
“We can co-lead, we can make small investments, we can make aggressive investments. We try to be flexible,” she said. And what about her? “I want to get hands-on experience. I want to be valuable to startups. And I want to focus on creating partnerships.”
Kato isn’t the only one receiving a promotion at work this week. Mia Panzer will also move from a business strategy role at one of Toyota’s technology subsidiaries to COO of Woven Capital. This means that one or two of the top roles at these corporate VC (CVC) firms will be held by women, a sign of how the male-dominated world of finance and investing is evolving.
Tech Crunch Event
San Francisco, California
|
October 13-15, 2026
Historically, women have done (only slightly) better at rising through the ranks at CVCs than at traditional venture firms. But the last bit of concrete data comes from a 2014 CBI report that found that among the top CVCs, less than 20% have women on their investment teams. This compares to only 7% of partners at the top 100 venture companies at the time.
In the venture world, that figure now stands at around 15.4%, suggesting that the proportion of women in investment roles at CVCs has also increased.
Kato joined the company in 2020 as one of the first new hires at then-newly spun off Woven Capital. (Spun off from an internal Toyota subsidiary.)
She spent 15 years in general investing, including on Unison Capital’s M&A team and as CFO of Japanese AI startup ABEJA. Since joining Woven, she has led six investments (including an undisclosed number) in startups such as reusable rocket company Stoke and autonomous vehicle company Nuro. It was my first investment. She is most interested in air mobility, physical AI, and hardware. “I think it can fundamentally change the way we manufacture,” she said of her vision for CVC.
Panzer will work alongside her in the newly created role of COO. She will be responsible for finance, operations, HR and legal strategy. She said there are two things every CVC always worries about. It is the corporate economic slowdown and disagreements with the parent company that ruin transactions. “My job is fundamentally to help solve this problem,” she said.
She has been working with Ro Gupta, Managing Director at Woven Capital, since founding the guidance company Camera in 2019. She joined the startup three months pregnant with her first child to run its finances. Previously, he worked at Goldman and then at pet wellness company Independent Pet Partners (IPP). She said she had no intention of quitting her job at IPP, but decided to give Gupta and Camera a chance.
“I really enjoy being involved in the startup world,” she said.
Toyota’s technology subsidiary then acquired Carmera (a sale she helped sell), and Gupta and Panzer joined that division. In December 2025, he became Managing Director of Woven Capital and decided to bring Panzer on board. Kato and Panzer report to Gupta.
At first Panzer did not think he was qualified enough. But while women always say they aren’t qualified enough for a job, men have thought about just jumping in and doing it. She reflected on a career full of assumptions about her, from a college recruiter who didn’t think she would have technical knowledge because she was a woman, to a friend at Goldman who told her she wasn’t a contender for a promotion because she was a woman.
She decided to just take the plunge, too.
“We talk a lot about Japanese concepts. Ikigai It’s about focusing on finding what you’re good at, what you love, what the world needs and what you can get paid for.” She adds that having generations of her family working in auto parts makes her feel full circle. “I always tell other women, ‘Try to lower their expectations.’ ‘It’s easy to over-communicate,’” she said.
