New Mexico's State Investment Council on Tuesday approved commitments to a new media and entertainment-focused fund stood up by a former chief executive of one of the state's most well-known companies, and a venture firm out of California's Bay Area.
One of the State Investment Council's approved investments Tuesday went to TK Media Tech Ventures, a New Mexico-based fund owned by a pair of managing partners, Jim Ward and Stewart Alsop. The Council (SIC), a state-run sovereign wealth fund that manages tens of billions in assets, unanimously OK'd a $15 million commitment to TK Media Tech Ventures.
Ward and Alsop have a history together, both working as partners with Alsop Louie Partners, an early-stage venture firm based in San Francisco launched by Alsop and Gilman Louie in the mid-2000s.
The pair have a history in the media and entertainment industry, too — Alsop started his career as a tech reporter before moving into the world of venture capital, and Ward worked as an ad agency executive and with Lucasfilm prior to joining Alsop Louie Partners.
Ward, between 2017 and 2021, served as co-CEO of Meow Wolf, the immersive art and entertainment company based in Santa Fe with several exhibitions spread across the region, in places like Las Vegas, Denver, the Dallas-Fort Worth area and, soon, Houston. He also advised the company, both before and after his time as part of the executive team.
"That's kind of who we are — two media guys [who] by happenstance happen to be here in New Mexico," Alsop told the SIC Tuesday. "We believe that there's an opportunity for us to establish a new venture fund here that will invest in technology companies enabling the next generation of media consumption."
TK Media Tech Ventures, which Ward and Alsop launched this year, would target investments in emerging "bridge" technologies, Ward told the Council, as part of what he called "the next convergence of technology and media and entertainment." That includes technologies like generative artificial intelligence, virtual and alternate reality tech and currency transfer platforms.
There's a particularly strong opportunity for those types of investments in New Mexico, the partners said. TK Media Ventures, Ward and Alsop said, would both support existing media and entertainment technological breakthroughs in the state, and look to help bring new techinto New Mexico.
One such potential investment Ward and Alsop discussed Tuesday is in Submersive, an immersive spa concept that's the brainchild of Corvas Brinkerhoff, one of the original co-founders of Meow Wolf. The spa concept is expected to partially open in Austin, Texas, in 2026.
Another firm approved for an SIC investment Tuesday is focused less on cutting-edge, emerging technologies, and more on helping traditional, established industries integrate new tech into their operations.
The SIC Tuesday also unanimously OK'd a $65 million commitment to Builders VC Fund III, an early-stage fund being raised by Builders VC LLC, a venture firm based in San Francisco.
The firm is overseen by six partners and was founded by Jim Kim. Its mission investments are targeted at "modernizing old-world, pen-and-paper industries," Kim told the Council Tuesday.
"These are sectors that over the past 10 years have not invested in technology," Kim said. "There's a significant technology debt that has accumulated, and unfortuantely it's time to pay the piper."
Factors like increasing commodity prices, labor shortages and regulatory hurdles have hurt companies operating in those "old-world" industries, Kim explained. It's up to those firms, then, he said, to "innovate their way out of these issues" by investing in new technological platforms, like automation practices or budgetary streamlining.
There's a "high degree of overlap" between the industries in which Builders invests and New Mexico's economic sectors," Kim said — so much overlap, in fact, that a few of the firm's existing portfolio companies have some of their largest customers in the state.
That's pushed those companies, including a San Francisco-based livestock insurance startup and a rural health care startup also based in California's Bay Area, to move their headquarters to New Mexico.
It's an approach that's worked well for Builders in other places like Hawai'i, Kim said Tuesday — bringing companies the firm invests in to states where the economy matches up with the problems they're trying to solve.
Both SIC commitments to TK Media Ventures and Builders VC came out of the Council's New Mexico private equity program, which invests state severance tax dollars into promising venture funds with the expectation of investment dollars flowing back to startups in the state.
An earlier version of this story included an incorrect figure in its headline, which has since been updated.
