Blue Bear Capital, a venture and growth equity firm focused on AI-powered solutions for the world’s energy, infrastructure, and climate challenges, has held the oversubscribed final close of its second venture capital fund at its hard cap of USD150 million.
Like Blue Bear’s first fund, the new fund will focus on digital technologies making an outsized impact in markets including wind, solar, the electric grid, EV infrastructure, transportation, and energy-intensive industries.
“Trillions of dollars will be spent to scale renewable energy, modernize infrastructure, and secure sustainable supply chains,” says Blue Bear partner Ernst Sack. “Meanwhile artificial intelligence is redefining how data is captured, decisions are made, and relationships are built all around us. Where these two forces converge — applying the power of AI-enabled technologies to the immense challenges of the energy transition — is where Blue Bear sees the greatest investment and impact opportunity of our lifetimes.”
The new fund will continue to focus at the early revenue stage and help companies scale in customers, product, and talent through Blue Bear’s network of thousands of industry contacts including corporate and private equity leaders who often sit on the boards of major customers and future strategic partners. Blue Bear’s model helps companies build past the startup phase and engage with large institutions and public equity markets which are increasingly looking for climate solutions with proven business execution.
“As specialists we believe in a high conviction, concentrated approach to portfolio construction,” says Blue Bear partner Vaughn Blake. “We select companies with long-term partnership in mind, we will be with you through the ups and downs, over the course of the company’s lifecycle. We avoid the high-volume approach to venture, where a handful of companies are expected to make up a fund’s returns while the bulk are left to fall away.”
Blue Bear investors in the new fund include premier institutions AIMS Imprint of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, ZOMA Capital, and the McKnight Foundation alongside leadership from over a dozen large private equity firms and energy companies. Advisory Board members include First Reserve President Alex Krueger, former NASA astronaut Tim Kopra, and former BP Chairman and CEO Lord John Browne.
“We are enthusiastic about the material alignment between the McKnight Foundation’s goals to invest in the energy transition and Blue Bear’s ambition to deliver outsized financial returns with quantifiable ESG impact,” says Elizabeth McGeveran, McKnight’s Director of Investments. “With so much capital entering the energy transition, we appreciate Blue Bear’s approach to delivering institutional capital to the formative, earlier stages of company building.”
