About
Mahdi Aladel is the Chief Executive Officer of Aramco Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Aramco, overseeing investments across six funds with more than $7.5 billion in committed capital. Under his leadership, Aramco Ventures was ranked the top global corporate venture capital firm of 2024 by Climate50. With 28 years of global experience, Mahdi brings deep strategic, commercial, industrial, and operational expertise across artificial intelligence, energy, energy transition, advanced materials, robotics, life sciences, and other frontier technologies. His mission is to translate breakthrough innovation into scalable real-world applications that generate long-term value. Prior to Aramco Ventures, Mahdi held several leadership roles across Aramco’s global operations. He served as Director of Base Oils & Finished Lubricants, where he established and led Aramco’s Global Base Oils Alliance and pioneered the Aramco Lubricants business and brand. Earlier in his career, he held roles within Aramco’s Corporate Planning organization, the Accelerated Transformation Program (ATP), and at Motiva LLC, where he led Strategy and Business Development. His experience spans both Upstream and Downstream sectors of the energy industry. He began his career in engineering roles, including production engineering at the Khursaniyah field, one of the Kingdom’s largest oil fields, as well as process engineering at the Ras Tanura Refinery and Chevron’s Richmond Refinery in California. Mahdi currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Wa’ed Ventures and Climate Investment, the venture capital arm of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI). He previously served as a Board Member of Luberef and ALuRe (Aramco Lubricants & Retail Company). He holds a BSc in Chemical Engineering and an MBA from King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, and a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University.