Congruent Ventures Closes More Than $300 Million Proving Interest in Climate Tech
The Climate Growth Fund Targeting Its Early-Stage Portfolio Makes Congruent One of the Largest Early-Stage Climate Investors with More Than $700M in Assets under Management
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, April 19, 2023 — Congruent Ventures, an early-stage climate and sustainability venture firm, today announced the close of its first Continuity Funds focused on quickly scaling its early-stage portfolio with more than $300 million in commitments, highlighting the interest of institutional investors seeking exposure to climate venture despite a challenging fundraising environment.
This brings total AUM for Congruent to more than $700 million, making it one of the largest climate portfolios in early-stage venture and nearly doubling the firm’s AUM. The fund’s commitments represent Limited Partners with more than $2 trillion in assets, bucking the recent trend of LPs trimming their exposure to venture capital and private equity.
The Continuity Fund navigates the ever-evolving climate environment to support Congruent’s early-stage portfolio companies as they scale to meet the demands of the changing climate innovation landscape. Congruent partners with companies at the earliest stages, and the Continuity Fund will be deployed to support them throughout their life cycles.
“Congruent invests in early-stage transformational companies in climate tech, where we leverage our capital and deep in-sector experience to fund the best companies in the space,” said Joshua Posamentier, co-founder and managing partner of Congruent Ventures.
Congruent’s portfolio includes category-leading climate companies from food to fusion, including Meati Foods, AMP Robotics, Fervo Energy, Span.IO, Hippo Harvest, Pano.AI, Avalanche Energy, Parallel Systems, and Lightship, among many others.
Congruent Ventures, launched in 2017, is co-led by Joshua Posamentier and Abe Yokell, who have decades of climate tech investing expertise between them. Congruent’s team has grown to 11 members who are among the most experienced and diverse in early-stage climate, having invested through the first Cleantech cycle. Investors supporting Congruent include CalSTRS, investors advised by Cambridge Associates, multiple U.S. and Canadian pension funds, the Grantham Foundation, Three Cairns Group, Sobrato Capital, and multiple other institutions representing some of the largest endowments, pensions, and foundations in the world.
“The fast-paced innovation and change now powered by funding from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act must be met with sufficient venture funding,” said Yokell, Congruent’s co-founder and managing partner. “We saw a strategic need to help our existing portfolio companies, and we’re delighted to have the support of our Limited Partners despite the broader pullback in venture investing.”
Congruent’s previous two fund families (Fund I family in 2017 at $92M and Fund II in 2021 at $175M) have been focused on supporting entrepreneurs who are building solutions to address sustainability challenges, investing early across hardware, software, enterprise, consumer, deep technology, fin-tech, and business model innovation. Our climate sector focuses on mobility and urbanization, energy transition, food and agriculture, and sustainable production and consumption.
Congruent has supported 51 companies over the past six years, making it one of the most active and experienced U.S. investors in climate. Its portfolio represents companies that will help to decarbonize every sector of the economy—energy, fleet electrification, farming, new food products, sustainable aviation fuels, manufacturing, and more.
