A couple years ago, when the pandemic was still in full swing, Raj Kapoor and Josh Felser started making some investments in climate tech startups.
Things must have gone well, because now they’re jumping in: The firm today said it has closed a $65 million inaugural fund, using it to back founders who are starting climate tech software companies.
Felser founded Spinner in 1997 (sold to AOL) and Crackle in 2004 (sold to Sony).
He also started the #Climate nonprofit in 2014 and a public-private COVID task force during the pandemic.
Those experiences, coupled with a growing concern for the state of the Earth’s climate, led the two to form Climactic.
The new funds come two years after BoxGroup raised $255 million for its fifth early-stage fund and second opportunity fund.
The sixth early-stage fund is almost double the fifth one, Tisch notes.
“For our early-stage fund, we grew, which in this environment, is of note,” Tisch said.
“In fact, it’s a pretty significant growth of the early-stage fund.
Similar to previous funds, Tisch expects to inject capital from the new funds into 40 to 50 new startups, writing check sizes between $500,000 and $1 million.
Playground Global, the storied early-stage venture capital firm, brought in $410 million in capital commitments for its Fund III to invest in early-stage deep tech and science companies.
With Fund III, similar to its $500 million Fund II raised in 2017, capital deployments in Fund III will focus on seed and Series A companies with initial investments ranging from $1 million to $20 million.
For Fund III, we broadened our LP base to include endowments, foundations, and single and multifamily offices.
When we founded Playground, our team was purpose-built to help develop both consumer technologies and deep tech companies.
We’ve been investing in deep tech companies since we founded Playground, with PsiQuantum being one of our very first investments.
For a VC firm, the second fund is a make-or-break moment.
First, after raising €225 million for its initial fund ($245 million at today’s exchange rate), Singular managed to raise €400 million for the second fund.
Second, all the investors who participated in the first fund are back as limited partners in the second fund — this is a good signal.
This wasn’t an obvious outcome for the VC firm, as it’s been a wild ride over the past two or three years in venture capital.
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