Climate tech VC firm Voyager Ventures has raised another fund hot on the heels of its first, bringing its assets under management to $200 million.
Founded in 2021, the San Francisco and New York-based firm has closed its second $100 million fund to back companies across software, hardware, and biotech that are focused on decarbonization.
Voyager Partners Select I Fund aims to lead or co-lead Series A and possibly some Series B rounds onwards, cutting checks of $5 million to $8 million to those tackling emissions in everything from transportation and energy to computing and food.
It serves as a follow-on pot for the firm’s first fund, Voyager Fund I, which invests at pre-Seed to Series A, allowing the firm to double down on portfolio companies that become more attractive thanks to overperformance or bigger-than-expected market opportunities. The new fund can invest alongside or after Voyager Fund I and independently where it has developed competitive access.
It comes as some VCs struggled to secure commitments in a down market with little liquidity. Climate tech investment was down last year, but it fared better than previously buzzy areas like fintech, thanks in part to the maturing financing landscape, an influx of second-time founders, and the continued urgency of the climate crisis.
With decades of climate experience in company-building, policymaking, academia, and investing, founding partners Sierra Peterson and Sarah Sclarsic now have access to “competitive Series As and the capacity to take a meaningful stake for Voyager,” Peterson told Business Insider.
“We had always intended to be able to follow on our earlier investing through Fund I with additional capital, and the opportunity presented itself to do so in raising Select right out of the field of Fund I,” she said.
Indeed, Select I is opportunistic in terms of its strategy and creation. The fund was spun up to participate in the Series A round of Remora, a startup developing semi-truck carbon capture systems; a quick first close reached in December 2021, Peterson said.
The fund hit final close in May 2023, which was previously undisclosed, just 15 months after closing its first fund. Both were oversubscribed, per the firm. It is also eyeing the second edition of the earlier-stage Voyager Fund, which Peterson and Sclarsic will start raising this year.
Select I will invest in around 15 companies across North America and Europe, with three deals already done. Voyager Ventures currently has 19 portfolio companies across the two funds.
The firm will back teams with a track record of executing and overperforming on their milestones and whose market opportunity has strengthened between rounds. It also considers the macro conditions, the corporate commitments to decarbonization, and the momentum in specific sectors when deciding whether to cut another check.
“When those fundamentals are even stronger than they were when we first made the investment — and of course they were very strong then — that’s an additional signal that we want to recognize and pay attention to and really seize the opportunity to double down, because we do have this particular insight and perspective both on this particular company and how the market has moved and evolved,” Sclarsic said.
Voyager Ventures sees its team’s operational expertise as a key differentiator, especially in hardware and building strategies to pull assets off the balance sheet and make the operating company capital efficient.
Select I secured significant appetite and participation from institutional investors and endowments, including LPAC members, Northwestern University, and Novo Holdings. Funds of funds, foundations, and banks also participated.
The firm will open a London office this year, with one of its seven-strong team moving to the UK.
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