Featured Investor | April 2025 - Summer Hua of Aramco Ventures

Summer Hua is an investor at Aramco Ventures, a $7.5B AUM venture capital arm of the world’s largest energy company. Since its inception in 2012, Aramco Ventures has backed over 100 startups pioneering cutting-edge technologies. As the first hire in California, Summer wears an “entrepreneurial” hat, playing a pivotal role in establishing the firm’s presence on the West Coast through sourcing and investing in deeptech companies from seed to pre-IPO. Her passion in impact-driven solutions drives her to develop theses and investments across energy efficiency and industrial digitization. Beyond investing, she collaborates closely with portfolio founders to shape product roadmaps and execute go-to-market strategies for scaling, accelerating first-of-a-kind deployments.

Having lived in Singapore, China, and New England, Summer brings a global perspective to her work. Her international upbringing has instilled in her a deep appreciation for cross-cultural collaboration and adaptability.

Prior to joining Aramco Ventures, Summer was a founding scout at Soma Capital, an early stage venture capital fund with over 20 unicorns. She began her venture career as a scout for Plug and Play Tech Center while running DECODE, the largest tech & entrepreneurship conference bridging Berkeley and Stanford ecosystems.

Summer graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with degrees in Business Administration, Economics, and Data Science. She is a firm believer in the transformative power of education, guided by the principle: “Goodness without knowledge is weak and feeble, yet knowledge without goodness is dangerous.”

EVCA: Describe a defining moment in your career and how it shaped where you are today.

Summer: A defining moment in my life isn’t just one event—it’s a pattern of embracing discomfort, challenging the status quo, and carving my own path. I’ve always been willing to be a guinea pig for new experiments, thriving in chaos and uncertainty. Three pivotal “no’s” stand out as moments that shaped who I am today. 

The first “no” came when I wanted to move from Singapore to attend boarding school in New Hampshire at 16. I had never been to the U.S. before, and suddenly I found myself in a place where 10 inches of snow covered the ground—something I’d only seen in movies. Coming from “a red dot” on the world map to an unfamiliar environment with no family or relatives laid the foundation for how growth often lies beyond the edges of familiarity.

The second “no” came during college when I ran for student government. I joined late in my junior year, and the election rules didn’t allow someone from my non-traditional background to run. However, my vision in creating a platform to streamline club recruitments and make opportunities more accessible rallied support. Working alongside my campaign team, we reworked the system and that experience taught me the power of prioritizing vision over metrics—you can only go so far by yourself, but with others, you can build something far greater.

The third “no” came when I wanted to go directly into venture investing right after college—a path many advised against. Convincing others to take a chance on me wasn’t easy, but I approached it like a blank canvas, ready to add bold strokes and create something uniquely my own.    

These experiences shaped how I approach life today—with a venture mindset. To me, this means treating life as an investment: building meaningful relationships, giving more than I take, and creating opportunities for others. It also means being patient with myself, embracing iteration—learning from setbacks and adapting along the way. Just like founders experiment with ideas to see what works, I’ve learned to get comfortable with the unknown unknowns.

Everyone has their own venture playbook, and I’ve come to realize that no one becomes great through imitation. Over time, I’ve learned to seek guidance on frameworks for thinking rather than asking for advice. So…lean in!

EVCA: What is an emerging technology trend that will have a significant impact on the world in the next decade?

Summer: An emerging technology trend that will have a profound impact on the world in the next decade is energy efficiency in data centers, particularly through the adoption of advanced liquid cooling technologies. As the global data center market grows from 55 gigawatts in 2023 to an estimated 219 gigawatts by 2030 accelerated by the AI boom, traditional air cooling systems are increasingly unable to keep pace with the power density and energy requirements of modern chips. High-performance computing and machine learning workloads demand massive infrastructure, and liquid cooling, including direct-to-chip, single-phase, and two-phase immersion systems, is emerging as the de facto solution, with 2025 being the tipping point for widespread adoption in AI-driven data centers.

Liquid cooling offers significant efficiency gains, reducing energy consumption by up to 40% while enabling higher rack densities and cutting operational costs. Beyond sustainability, it addresses critical scalability challenges as chips become more complex and compute-intensive. The competitive landscape is evolving rapidly, with startups like LiquidStack and Iceotope driving innovation while incumbents such as NVIDIA and Schneider Electric double down on investments. However, Iforesee consolidation in this space as hyperscalers standardize hybrid systems and fully automated data centers emerge, integrating liquid cooling with AI-driven operational streamlining.

From a venture perspective, this paradigm shift represents a massive opportunity to back companies that are not only innovating on liquid cooling technologies but also enabling faster deployment cycles and partnerships with chipmakers. Energy efficiency in data centers isn’t just about reducing costs—it’s about meeting the growing demands of AI infrastructure while addressing global sustainability challenges. This is a sector where speed, scalability, and impact converge, making it one of the most exciting frontiers for investment in the next decade.