Steve Cook

Senior Advisor, Verdane

Steve Cook is a serial innovator at the boundary of deep tech and commercial value creation. He has 25 years of experience entrepreneurially developing new businesses for the energy transition.

Steve completed a doctorate in bio-organic chemistry at Jesus College, Oxford, before joining BP, where he spent over 20 years pitching, building and leading new business areas from a blank sheet of paper.

He was an early pioneer in hydrogen for transport – building and demonstrating hydrogen refuelling infrastructure. Steve was part of the launch team for BP’s Alternative Energy business in 2005, which spent $10B developing wind, hydrogen, solar and biofuels businesses globally. As VP of technology commercialization (a new role he created), he built a capability within BP to creatively monetize IP. In this role, Steve spanned out new venture-backed companies, such as Silicon Microgravity. In 2018, he successfully pitched the idea to the BP CEO to create a subsidiary within which to scale new digital businesses for the energy transition – this became BP Launchpad, which has since won the world’s best venture builder for two consecutive years in the International Chamber of Commerce / Mind the Bridge innovation awards. Steve led this organization, building a portfolio of seven companies with a combined revenue of around $100M at the end of 2022.

Steve left BP at the end of 2022 and now has a portfolio of roles in the energy transition start-up/scale-up ecosystem, including senior advisor to Verdane Capital’s Energy Transition Fund, chair of the board for Luffy AI, and NED at Optimal Monitoring.

Steve has also been a founding trustee of two charities – My Social Innovation (providing entrepreneurial skills to disadvantaged young people in London) and New Dots (commissioning the work of new classical composers).