Share the full article
Hardware intensive climate tech may do the heavy lifting of the clean energy transition, but venture capital firms can’t help but love software and asset-light investments that also contribute to the cause.
One example: Blue Bear Capital, which has clinched a $160 million fund focused on software and AI solutions that increase the efficiency, reliability and scale of critical climate infrastructure. “We invest in companies that automate the energy industry,” Carolin Funk, a partner at the firm, told ImpactAlpha.
Investors in Blueear’s third fund include the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the McKnight Foundation, the Walton family’s Zoma Capital, UBS, WovenEarth Ventures, and numerous executives at private equity and infrastructure funds investing in a personal capacity. Blue Bear has also raised a further $40 million in follow-on commitments.
Growing opportunity
Funk sees a growing opportunity as clean energy infrastructure and energy-intensive industries are commercialized and grow to a critical mass. As these projects and industries grow more and more complex and interconnected, outages and lost connections are increasingly problematic and difficult to repair. The industries “are ripe for automation”, said Funk.
The fund will be invested in approximately 20 companies. Blue Bear typically backs founders from the energy industry who are adept at adapting to the evolving needs of the energy industry, said Funk.
This is in keeping with Blue Bear’s strategy for its first and second funds (Fund II closed on $150 million in 2022). But whereas prior funds were invested into companies supporting renewable energy projects (such as Raptor Maps, which provides digital twinning for solar assets, and Omnidian, a remote monitoring tool for solar assets), with Fund III, the firm is also seeing a growing set of opportunities in the data center and climate adaptation sectors.
