A group of venture capital firms is getting together to push founders and funders to fight climate change.
A coalition of some 23 firms has formed the Venture Climate Alliance, or VCA, they announced Tuesday. The group, which includes numerous Bay Area firms, wants to encourage early-stage investors to fight climate change and help the companies in their portfolios achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Many of the world's largest companies, such as Apple Inc., have already made commitments to reducing or eliminating their carbon emissions. VCA is hoping to use the startup-venture ecosystem to help legacy companies and industries achieve the same goals, Alexandra Harbour, a principal at Prelude Ventures who is the founder and chairperson of the VCA, said in the news release.
"If we're serious about moving the entire world economy into alignment with a pathway to net zero emissions, we must consider the critical role that private markets play in that journey," said Daniel Firger, a VCA co-founder and a managing director at Great Circle Capital Advisors.
Among the local firms that are part of the alliance are Prelude, DCVC and Obvious Ventures — all based in San Francisco — as well as Congruent Ventures and Valo Ventures, which are both based in Palo Alto. Tiger Global and Union Square Capital, which both have Bay Area teams, are also part of VCA.
The group plans to provide venture firms and their portfolio companies with tools and resources to analyze and understand their own emissions, as well as understand the data in the context of the larger global climate change discussion.
While Fortune 500 companies can afford to devote resources to fighting climate change and finding net-zero solutions, start-ups don't have that luxury, Firger told Axios.
"Budgets are tight. Bandwidth is really constrained," he said to Axios. "So, providing ... support for those portfolio companies and founders is very much of a vision for what the VCA will help members to do."
Here's more Bay Area venture and startup news at midweek:
Funding rounds
- Replit Inc., San Francisco, $97.4 million, Series B: Andreessen Horowitz led the round for this provider of app development software that valued it at $1.16 billion. Khosla Ventures, Coatue Management, SV Angel, Y Combinator, Bloomberg Beta, Naval Ravikant and Ark Ventures also invested.
- Evommune Inc., Palo Alto, $50 million, Series B: Arix Bioscience plc, EQT Life Sciences and SymBiosis Capital Management led the round for this developer of treatments for inflammatory diseases. Amplitude Ventures, Pivotal bioVenture Partners and Andera Partners also participated.
- AiXplain Inc., Los Gatos, $8 million, Seed: Transform VC and Calibrate Ventures led the round for this provider of software for developing artificial intelligence models.
- Hakimo Inc., Menlo Park. $6 million: Rocketship.vc. led the round for this company that uses computer vision and machine learning to automate the monitoring of physical security sensors such as cameras and badge readers. Neotribe Ventures, Defy.vc, Firebolt Ventures and Carrier Global Corp. (via Carrier Ventures) also invested.
SPACs
- Picard Medical Inc. has agreed to go public in a merger with Altitude Acquisition Corp. Picard is the Palo Alto-based parent company of SynCardia Systems LLC, which makes mechanical hearts. Altitude Acquisition is a special purpose acquisition company based in Atlanta. The companies project that they will be valued at about $480 million after the merger, assuming no Altitude investors seek refunds on their shares.
M&A
- Lookout Inc. agreed to sell its consumer mobile security business to F-Secure Corp. for about $223 million. Based in San Francisco, Lookout is a provider of cybersecurity software that was last valued by its venture backers at $1.75 billion. F-Secure is a Finland-based cybersecurity software provider.
Funders in the news
- Base10 Partners promoted Luci Fonseca to partner. Previously, Fonseca was a principal at the San Francisco venture firm.
- Commerce Ventures promoted Vivek Krishnamurthy to partner. Krishnamurthy had previously been a principal at the San Francisco venture firm.
Business Journal TechFlash Editor Cromwell Schubarth contributed to this report. If you have funding or venture capital news, please let us know at svbjnews@bizjournals.com.
