Blue Bear Capital Raises $160M for AI-Powered Climate and Energy Tech Investments

Blue Bear Capital Closes Third Fund, Adding $200 Million to Platform for Machine Intelligence Investments into Energy, Infrastructure, and Climate Industries

JACKSON, Wyo. and LOS ANGELES, Nov. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Blue Bear Capital, a venture and growth equity firm focused on AI-powered solutions for the world's energy, infrastructure, and climate challenges, today announced the close of its $160M Fund III and additional follow-on vehicles. The new fund will continue Blue Bear's commitment to entrepreneurs building digital technology companies in markets which include sustainable energy production, electric grid infrastructure, transportation and logistics, energy-intensive industries, and climate industries such as storm and wildfire protection, pollution reduction, and water and land management. Blue Bear unites machine intelligence, human creativity, and entrepreneurship for an intelligent, globally competitive energy and industrial economy. Founded in 2016, Blue Bear has a proven track record of investing in leading energy technology companies through its prior funds, including its $150M Fund II announced in 2021. Fund III will continue the firm's model of investing in companies applying operational AI and showing commercial ramp-up, which Blue Bear can accelerate through its network of private equity, infrastructure fund, and energy industry relationships. "There is nothing artificial about artificial intelligence," said Blue Bear Partner Ernst Sack. "Just like the evolution of the eyeball or the development of writing, it is the next step in how information is found, shared, analyzed, and used to improve the world around us. At Blue Bear we are dedicated to uniting this machine intelligence with human creativity and entrepreneurship and leveraging that powerful combination to drive forward a modern, intelligent, sustainable, and globally competitive energy and industrial economy." Fund III was funded by dozens of senior executives from leading private equity and infrastructure funds, alongside returning Blue Bear institutional investors such as Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the McKnight Foundation, and Zoma Capital (a Walton Family affiliate), in addition to new partners including UBS and WovenEarth Ventures. "With our third fund, we're continuing to champion the data revolution across energy and industry. By investing in the intelligence behind the transition, companies have the opportunity to achieve excellent financial returns and meaningful impact on the climate. Together, we're building a cleaner, smarter energy future," added Blue Bear Partner, Vaughn Blake. Fund III has already made investments in four new companies; ChargerHelp!, Pioneer, SKOON, and Delos; with three additional investments still to be announced. These companies demonstrate the range and diversity of Blue Bear's markets: ChargerHelp! uses remote asset management software to make electric vehicle infrastructure more reliable, Pioneer uses AI tooling to help energy and climate entrepreneurs access and manage capital, SKOON is creating an online marketplace for electrified industrial equipment like batteries and generators, and Delos uses AI analytics to help insurers quantify and manage wildfire risk. These businesses echo past Blue Bear investment success themes from companies like Raptor Maps, which has analyzed more than 100 gigawatts of utility-scale solar assets, TruckLabs which improves trucking fuel efficiency by over 5% (recently sold to a Tier 1 auto supplier), Mira which uses augmented reality to improve factory and utility efficiency (and was sold to Apple), Urbint which builds digital twins of critical grid infrastructure for over 30 leading US utilities, and Hydrosat which monitors water resource risk for agriculture and commodity markets. "We have great respect for Blue Bear's leadership and team depth as an early-stage investor in digital solutions for decarbonization and we are delighted to be LPs in Fund III," said Jane Woodward, co-founder and partner at WovenEarth Ventures. "The team's unique industry experience and perspective allows Blue Bear to fill the gap between the energy supply chain of the past and the energy needs of the future." Blue Bear's leadership team is built on decades of energy and industrial investment experience, operational and strategy perspective, and network building. Partner Ernst Sack has 20 years of investment experience across energy private equity, solar project finance, and venture capital - including with Riverstone and Deep Green Solar - and has served on more than 30 energy and technology company boards. Partner Vaughn Blake is a veteran venture investor and operator whose experience spans deep tech, multi-asset class manager selection as an LP, and growth stage investing. Partner Dr. Carolin Funk is an energy transition expert with 20 years of experience in policy and corporate venture - including with the German Energy Agency and with Siemens - and as COO of two energy storage startups. CTO and Partner Dr. Rob MacInnis holds a doctorate in computer science and has decades of startup experience in cloud computing and blockchain technologies. General Counsel and COO Hank Hattemer, a tech entrepreneur, formerly worked with global law firm Latham & Watkins' leveraged finance group. "The energy and climate landscape has become more dynamic than ever for founders to navigate. We are committing the collective experience and intelligence of our network to support founders along the journey towards impactful outcomes," said Blue Bear Partner Dr. Carolin Funk. About Blue Bear Capital Blue Bear is a venture capital and early growth equity firm driving digital technologies and machine intelligence into multibillion-dollar verticals across the energy, infrastructure, and climate industries. The team comes from leading energy private equity firms, startups, and large industrial technology developers. Blue Bear typically leads Seed through Series B rounds, with a portfolio covering operational AI, IoT, and cybersecurity technologies, all deployed with enterprise customers to drive connectivity and intelligence across the world's most critical industries. More information can be found at www.bluebearcap.com. Chris Allieri Mulberry & Astor [email protected] View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/blue-bear-capital-closes-third-fund-adding-200-million-to-platform-for-machine-intelligence-investments-into-energy-infrastructure-and-climate-industries-302312170.html SOURCE Blue Bear Capital Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Blue Bear Capital lands $160M to back AI founders in climate, energy, and industry

It's a truism in the climate tech world that hardware is paramount. After all, you can't curb carbon pollution without fixing cement, steel, hydrogen, and more. But as with anything today, hardware is just part of the equation. "In almost every case, hardware is going to be developed with software in mind," Vaughn Blake, partner at Blue Bear Capital, told TechCrunch It's why Blue Bear Capital is taking a software-centric approach -- one that, even if it's not contrarian, swims against the prevailing currents in climate, industrial, and energy investing, where funds that invest in hardware or a mix of hardware and software tend to dominate. "We think the impact potential of digital solutions and applied AI is tremendous," said Ernst Sack, partner at Blue Bear. Take, for example, a solar company, he said. Like any hardware, solar farms encounter equipment problems that can limit power production. But, Sack said, if an operator is able to use a monitoring service like Raptor Maps, a company Blue Bear is invested in, it could help them minimize losses. "Take 10% just as a round number," Sack said. "A company like Raptor Maps is deployed across over 100 gigawatts of solar generation capacity, and a 10% of performance improvement is 10 gigawatts. That's roughly equivalent to 10 billion of cap-ex and something like three to five coal-fired power plants or nuclear plants." Sack, Blake, and their colleagues see opportunity beyond traditional climate-friendly technologies like solar. "The applicability of AI is so universal," Sack said, citing wind, water treatment, refrigeration, steel, cement, chemicals production, and marine and aviation logistics. "So many parts of the world economy have an energy intensity where, if we were to build a physical, hard asset or a hardware company, it can almost always only serve one narrow vertical. Maybe a big vertical, but it's a vertical. Whereas software is really universally applicable." To invest in that thesis, Blue Bear recently raised a $160 million third fund. Limited partners include the McKnight Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, UBS, Woven Earth Ventures, and Zoma Capital along with executives from private equity and infrastructure funds. Blue Bear borrows a bit from those LPs' approaches to investing, bringing more of a later-stage strategy to earlier-stage investing. The fund is reserving twice as much money for follow-on investments as initial checks; for the typical $5 million check Blue Bear plans to write, it's holding another $10 million for additional investments to maintain ownership. The fund expects to invest in about 15 companies, Blake said. By keeping the portfolio small, he added, the fund is hoping that it can help more companies make it to an exit. "The model through which we invest understands and presupposes that IPOs are going to be less likely in the markets in which we invest," Blake said. "And M&A, whether that's strategic or private equity-backed, are much more likely." As a result, each successful exit might be smaller than the usual outsize numbers that many venture funds target, but in aggregate, he said they hope to deliver similar returns for LPs.