New Mexico is on the mind of a California venture capital firm that is in the midst of raising a $100 million fund, according to its operating partner Abhi Mukherjee.
His VC, CerraCap Ventures of Costa Mesa, California, sees a lot of potential in startups spinning out of New Mexico's national labs. And some of its next fund may go to startups in New Mexico, which Mukherjee said has a "fantastic innovation ecosystem."
“What we are trying to do is assess the landscape. And our assessment is we have all the essential ingredients," Mukherjee said of New Mexico in a Feb. 9 interview. However, "the framework [to connect different stakeholders] is sort of missing," he said.
About a quarter of the total fund has been raised, according to Mukherjee and partner Ritesh Agarwal.
CerraCap is also trying to convince some of its portfolio companies to move to New Mexico. One of those companies is GreenArc Capital of Singapore, which is in discussions to do just that, Mukherjee said. GreenArc has a software-as-a-service platform for monitoring the impact of investments on the environment and society.
According to Mukherjee, CerraCap wants to find a New Mexico company that it can help turn into a unicorn (a private company worth more than $1 billion) in the next three to five years. The VC was formed in 2015 and invests in health care, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence technology startups.
CerraCap says its portfolio includes mRNA health testing business Viome, which is led in part by former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist and chief science officer Momo Vuyisich alongside CEO Naveen Jain.
Last year, Jain disclosed that Viome had relocated its laboratory from New Mexico to Washington state, Kaiser Health News reported. CerraCap wants to see the opposite.
“We are changing that equation. We are trying to bring the companies back into [the] New Mexico ecosystem,” Mukherjee said. One of the VC’s partners will be “dedicating a lot of time” to the state, he added.
CerraCap also plans to open an office in Albuquerque or Santa Fe, although it has yet to decide on a specific city.
A previous version of this story stated that Greenarc Capital provides credit financing solutions to the conservation, education and consumer finance sectors — among others. That was incorrect. GreenArc has a software-as-a-service platform for monitoring the impact of investments on the environment and society.
