Mark Platshon

Managing Director, Icebreaker Ventures

Mark Platshon is Executive Advisor for Tokyo Gas’ corporate venture fund, Acario Innovation. He is also the Managing Director and co-founder of Icebreaker Ventures. This new multicorporate “ecosystem” venture fund invests in the technologies that underpin ACES – autonomous/AI, connected, electric and shared mobility – and all the disruptive new businesses that are being enabled.

Previously, Mark was the Senior Investment Advisor to BMW i-Ventures from 2011 through 2016. He served on SAFE’s Autonomous Driving Task Force (Secure America’s Future Energy), Faurecia’s Strategic Advisory Board and assisted the TSR (Together for Safer Roads) – an association of major corporates dedicated to improving transportation safety.

Previously Mark was a serial Silicon Valley CEO for 20 years and a partner with Trident Capital, VantagePoint Capital Partners and Birchmere Ventures.

Mark is co-founder of Amprius, a Lithium-ion battery company spun out of Stanford. He was an early investor in Tesla. He has served as CEO of Elo, Idetek (acquired by Idexx), Zing (Sony) and Ancore (Rapiscan). He has also been a board member of Synxis (acquired by Sabre) and Everdream (Dell).

Mark has invested in or served as advisor to numerous private mobility-related companies, including: Peloton, Nauto, RideCell, ChargePoint, Turo, Mapper.ai, Amprius, Ionic Materials, Seurat, Estimote, Deep Vision, Akridata, Diatom, Helm.ai and SimpleNight.

Mark earned a BSE in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering at the University of Michigan and an MBA from Stanford University. As a Lieutenant in the Navy, Mark studied nuclear engineering at Westinghouse and served on Admiral Rickover’s nuclear submarine engineering staff.