Henry Makansi

Henry Makansi is a Managing Partner and one of the three co-founders of Kimmeridge, the energy-focused investment firm he launched in 2012 alongside Ben Dell and Dr. Neil McMahon. Kimmeridge began as a direct investor in U.S. unconventional oil and gas assets and has since grown into a roughly $6 billion platform spanning conventional energy and the energy transition, with offices in New York, Denver, the UK, and Abu Dhabi.

Before co-founding Kimmeridge, Makansi spent about a decade as a principal investor in private equity at Warburg Pincus, where he served in several roles including Head of the European Energy Practice, overseeing investments across exploration and production, oilfield services, and alternative energy. Earlier in his career he spent roughly three years in mergers, acquisitions, and capital markets at Lehman Brothers and at GP Bullhound, a London-based investment bank.

Makansi holds a master's degree in economic theory and mathematical economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam, and completed accredited postgraduate coursework in game theory, macroeconomics, and international economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Outside of energy, he serves as a member of the Council of the University of Chicago's Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures.

Today his work centers on Kimmeridge's energy-transition portfolio, where he sits on the boards of several of the firm's platform companies, spanning nature-based carbon removal, community solar, battery storage, and land-data businesses.

• Invests through Kimmeridge's private-capital funds rather than as an individual angel — deals are energy and energy-transition focused, at PE/growth scale, not seed checks.
• Core sectors: upstream oil & gas (E&P) and oilfield services, plus energy-transition themes — carbon removal, distributed/community solar, battery storage, and energy data platforms.
• Emphasis on real assets and asset-backed platforms in energy (e.g., generation, storage, land/data) rather than pure software plays.
• Kimmeridge's broader thesis (led publicly by co-founder Ben Dell) pairs disciplined investment in conventional energy with a pragmatic bet on decarbonization and the energy transition; Makansi drives much of the transition-company board work.
• Geographic focus is primarily the United States, consistent with the firm's roots in U.S. unconventional resources.