Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

From Charlottesville, VA and Nashville:

Iron Path Capital, an operationally focused private equity firm investing in the specialty industrials and healthcare sectors, has announced the final closing of Iron Path Capital Fund I, exceeding the $250 million target  with total commitments of $273 million. The Fund I limited partners consist of a diverse group of global investors including leading endowments, fund of funds, institutional investors and family offices.

“We are extremely grateful for the investors that have decided to partner with us in our inaugural institutional fund,” said Iron Path Managing Partner and Co-Founder Rob Reistetter. “This marks an important achievement for the firm and is a reflection of our differentiated capabilities and the strong team that we have built over our first three years.”

Iron Path Capital targets control investments in lower-middle market specialty industrial and healthcare companies, in partnership with founders and managers, to build and grow great businesses. Iron Path focuses on sectors where the firm has deep expertise and where they can create transformational outcomes with the operational resources of the Full Immersion Operations team.

“Our approach includes developing an investment thesis and partnering with founders and managers to scale businesses organically and with strategic acquisitions,” said Scott Mraz, fellow Co-Founder and Managing Partner. “We have curated a team of limited partners, strategic advisors and Iron Path professionals who share our unique vision and our steadfast values.”

From Menlo Park, CA:

Kleiner Perkins has announced a $2 billion raise for two new funds. One is its 21st venture fund, appropriately named KP21, an $825 million fund to back early stage companies. The other – KP Select III – is a $1.2 billion fund to back high inflection investments.

In announcing the two funds, Kleiner Perkins noted that the “team’s focus on enterprise software, consumer, healthcare, fintech and hardtech, remains the same. Each domain will be accelerated tremendously by AI (artificial intelligence). Repeated rote tasks are being quickly automated and offloaded to AI, so that humans can focus on what they do best – higher level reasoning and decision making. Human creativity will be complemented with machine intelligence and pave the way for novel consumer experiences. Industries that have been slower to adopt software, and that require human labor for low level work, like healthcare, legal, finance will see rapid transformation. New experiences and the demands of computation will open up opportunities in hardware and physical infrastructure. Imagination is now the constraining factor of the future of technology.”

From Austin, TX:

Elsewhere Partners announced the closing of Elsewhere Partners (EP) III L.P. with $285 million in additional capital focused on majority investments in growth-ready Business-to-Business software companies. Because of Elsewhere Partners’ distinct investment model and strong performance, an Ivy League Endowment and several returning and new prominent institutional investors backed EP Fund III.

Since its launch in 2016 by seasoned Austin Ventures alumni Chris Pacitti and John Thornton, Elsewhere Partners has sought to redefine software investment strategies and unlock the full potential of capital-efficient software companies with proven products constrained by suboptimized go-to-market practices. With decades of experience leading early stage investments and navigating transformational investments in capital-efficient software companies together since founding Elsewhere through its first and second funds, the evolution of the firm into an early stage private equity (PE) firm has been a natural progression.

Click here to read the firm’s news release.

From San Francisco, CA:

• Industry Ventures, an investment firm focused on private technology investments, has announced the final closing of Industry Ventures Partnership Holdings VII, L.P., the firm’s seventh hybrid fund investing in emerging seed and early stage funds through primary and early secondary Limited Partnership interests and direct investments. With $900 million of committed capital, the oversubscribed fund brings the firm’s total committed capital under management to more than $8 billion, with $2.3 billion dedicated to early stage hybrid funds. Founded in 2000, Industry Ventures invests across all stages of the venture capital and private technology lifecycle through complementary fund strategies. The firm is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Washington, DC, and London.
• Rebellion Ventures has announced its inaugural fund, which is dedicated to partnering with entrepreneurs to build what it coined the era of artificial super capability (ASC) through autonomous operations and artificial intelligence (AI) agents that have the power to revolutionize business models and unleash the greatest productivity boost in human history. In its news release announcing the inaugural $12.9 million pre-seed/seed fund, Rebellion noted that it foresees the shift from passive, intelligence-focused AI to action-oriented artificial super capability that drives business outcomes autonomously. In the real world, it is the context-specific ability to act that delivers results, rather than general intelligence. AI capabilities will evolve to be superior to humans in areas such as speed, cost, and accuracy. This shift will create an era of artificial super capability, with the potential to increase productivity by 10 to 100 times, unleashing growth and transforming business models and the way we work. Rebellion predicts the emergence of a diverse AI workforce across industries, including AI workers, digital humans, autopilots, and autonomous agents. These entities will bring super-human capabilities, continuously learning, observing, thinking, and acting 24/7 to proactively achieve business goals and elevate human work.
• TechCrunch reports that A*, led by former Eventbrite Founder Kevin Hartz, has raised $315 million for its oversubscribed Fund II. He is joined in the new fund by former Coatue Partner Bennett Siegel and former Opendoor and Uber Operator Gautam Gupta. The firm plans to continue its focus of leading seed rounds and doubling down on portfolio companies at the Series A, in addition to making select new investments at the Series B stage.

From Pasadena and Berkeley, CA:

Freeflow Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm that invests in science-driven solutions to human and planetary health challenges, has announced that it raised $50 million in new funds through its $35 million Fund Two and $15 million Opportunity Fund. Including $40 million raised in two previous funds, Freeflow now has $90 million in assets under management.

From New York City:

PitchBook reports that Union Square Ventures (USV) is targeting $275 million for its 2024 vintage fund, according to a regulatory filing. USV successfully rode the last venture capital wave in the mid-2010s, and its flagship funds consistently generated an internal rate of return above 25 percent, according to returns data from the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association (LACERA), one of USV’s Limited Partners.

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