Representatives from three large venture capital firms based in California's Bay Area are set to be in Albuquerque next week as part of a technology forum hosted by Albuquerque-based Roadrunner Venture Studios.
Those three firms — Menlo Park-based Khosla Ventures, San Francisco's Prelude Ventures and Palo Alto-based Playground Global — manage a combined $17.5 billion in assets, according to the venture website PitchBook. All three share a common focus on investing in emerging science and technology companies across a range of industries, including climate tech, advanced manufacturing and artificial intelligence.
The largest share of those assets under management comes from Khosla Ventures, which manages $15 billion in assets, per PitchBook. Alice Brooks, a partner at Khosla Ventures, will join Peter Barrett, a general partner at Playground Global, and Carly Anderson, a principal at Prelude Ventures, for a panel Tuesday on investing in "deep tech," according to a recent LinkedIn post by Roadrunner Venture Studios.
Deep tech usually consists of intensive technologies backed by some form of hardware, Adam Hammer, the co-founder and CEO of Roadrunner Venture Studios, told New Mexico Inno in June. Roadrunner's focus, Hammer said, is building startups around those types of more intensive technologies that come out of national labs and research universities in New Mexico.
Roadrunner plans to hold a technology forum at Albuquerque's Wool Warehouse Theater on Tuesday, which the deep tech investment panel — moderated by Jay Newton-Small, the CEO of D.C. health tech startup PlanAllies — will be a part of. The forum will also be a chance to showcase Roadrunner's progress so far after introducing itself to the New Mexico startup and technology community in late June, Hammer recently told New Mexico Inno.
Khosla Ventures and Playground Global, two of the VCs represented at the forum, have previous exposure to New Mexico.
Khosla led the $11 million round raised by Los Alamos-based Spiritus Technologies in September, announced when the direct air capture startup emerged from stealth. New Mexico's State Investment Council (SIC), an institutional investment body that manages billions in permanent and governmental funds for the state, committed $35 million to Playground at its March 28 monthly meeting.
The Council also previously committed $100 million to America's Frontier Fund (AFF), a national frontier tech venture firm that provided $10 million in backing to start up Roadrunner Venture Studios in New Mexico — a move that made national headlines.
SIC investments out of its New Mexico private equity program — which both commitments to Playground and AFF came from — take a small portion of state Severance Tax dollars and put them into funds with the expectation of investments in New Mexico.
