The 2150 team. Image: 2150
2150, which invests in start-ups operating in the sustainability and urban tech sectors, is looking to boost its portfolio.
European venture capital firm 2150 today (12 October) announced the final closing of an oversubscribed €268m fund.
The announcement comes just a few months after the first close of its flagship fund at €130m when the VC launched in February of this year.
Its Urban Sustainability Technology Fund is to be used to back start-ups and companies operating in the sustainability and urban environment sectors.
2150’s latest investors include Credit Suisse, Norwegian sovereign climate investment company Nysnø, the BMW Foundation and Woven Capital, the investment arm of Toyota’s Woven Planet Group. Existing investors include Northern European real estate private equity platform NREP, Chr Augustinus Fabrikker, Novo Holdings and Denmark’s Green Future Fund.
In a blog post accompanying the announcement, the company wrote: “Our investors are our partners, and they entrust us with their money to deliver on our mission to back impactful technologies that can make our urban environment more efficient, sustainable and resilient. Their investment allows us to actively seek brilliant entrepreneurs working on technologies that can have the scale of impact we need to achieve.”
2150 has offices in Berlin, Copenhagen and London. The VC is focusing on Series A investments and is looking to add around 20 companies to its initial portfolio.
Already in its portfolio are sustainability-focused businesses including CarbonCure, Aeroseal, Nodes & Links and Ampd Energy. It recently invested in Normative, a Swedish start-up that helps companies track their carbon footprint with automation software.
Christian Jølck, partner and co-founder of 2150, said the VC is aiming to become a “significant contributor” to reaching The Paris Agreement by focusing on the urban environment.
“We seek not only to be an investor, but also a facilitator of urban transformation through our platform with strategic investors,” he added.
Co-founder Christian Hernandez told TechCrunch: “We were targeting €200m, which was already ambitious, and then things took off in a good way. We raised one of the largest climate tech funds in Europe.”
The company has plans in the future to hire a dedicated head of sustainability to quantitatively track and report its own sustainability impact. It claimed that its current portfolio has the potential to mitigate more than 1.6 gigatonnes of CO2.
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