A Cambridge venture capital firm that has invested in local companies like EverQuote and Vestmark launched its third investment fund Tuesday.
Link Ventures' new fund, called "Link Ventures 3LP," has raised approximately $150 million in commitments.
Link Ventures, which invests in early-stage technology companies, said it plans to invest in fast-growing startups using data science and machine learning technologies.
“When I started my first company, DataSage, more than 25 years ago, my co-founders and I were early AI pioneers leveraging our machine learning research from MIT and then convincing our customers about the ways that AI and machine learning can super-charge their business,” Dave Blundin, co-founder and managing partner of Link Ventures, said in a statement.
“We were fortunate enough to sell the company at a value that is equivalent to a unicorn today and this has given us the opportunity to invest in and support so many new entrepreneurs who are pursuing a similar dream.”
The first capital from this third fund has already been deployed to payment protection company nsKnox as part of its recent $17 million round.
To date, Link Ventures says it has invested in more than 40 startups, including companies like healthcare insurance marketplace Healthcare.com and digital auto refinancing company Caribou.
The firm’s two previous funds weighed in at about the same amount. Link Ventures announced its second $100 million fund in 2019 and aimed to invest in early-stage consumer internet companies. The first fund started deploying capital soon after the firm launched in 2006. Managing director Rob Chaplinsky previously told the Business Journal that the fund had an “evergreen structure” and it “grew as investments were realized and returns were rolled over.”
With its latest fund, Link Ventures aims to focus on the rapidly evolving fields of AI and ML.
“Our home base in Cambridge places us at the nexus of the best engineering, AI and ML talent in the world. We have regular interaction with the brightest minds solving the biggest problems with AI," Chaplinsky said in a statement. “When I began my career at Intel, we innovated at the pace of Moore’s Law. Today, deep learning and AI are far outpacing that cycle; we can only imagine what we will be able to achieve, and we plan to invest in companies bringing these technologies to market in applications that enhance the efficiency of the enterprise and improve consumer lives.”
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