A climate fund that grew out of the old Oregon BEST cleantech development program is backing three West Coast startups with a total of $600,000 in its first round of investments.
VertueLab said it funded OpConnect of Tigard, the California company Harvest Thermal and Seattle’s BlueDot Photonics through its new Climate Impact Fund.
VertueLab figures it spurred $275 million in follow-on funding by investing $7 million in 58 companies in its Oregon BEST days. Now less yoked to Business Oregon, its focus is broader geographically. At the same time, the fund is more firmly pointed at companies tackling climate issues, stepping up at an early stage where venture capital can be reluctant to go.
“Given the urgency of the climate crisis and the existing climate tech capital gap, these three companies represent an opportunity to provide scalable climate impact in the areas of vehicle electrification, efficient home heating, and renewable energy generation, all of which are major opportunities for greenhouse gas mitigation,” Ken Vaughn, director of impact investments, said in a statement.
OpConnect, the Oregon company in the round, makes a payment processing and energy management platform for EV charging. Bay Area-based Harvest Thermal provides heat pump systems for space and water heating. BlueDot Photonics is working with the alternative semiconductor material perovskite to improve the efficiency of solar panels.
Among the companies VertueLab backed in its earlier incarnation: Three-wheeled EV maker Arcimoto, which is now publicly traded and has a market cap of more than $400 million, and long-duration energy storage company ESS, which is aiming to go public in a deal that values it at $1.1 billion.
