USA – Battery Ventures, a global, technology-focused investment firm, has closed new funds totaling $3.8 billion.
The new funds include Battery Ventures XIV and a companion fund, together capitalized at $3.3 billion, and the $530 million Battery Ventures Select Fund II, a vehicle intended to make additional investments primarily in portfolio companies of the firm’s other funds.Battery will use the new capital to continue investing in companies at all stages, from seed and early-stage venture to buyout, in areas such as business software, including fin-tech and healthcare-IT; infrastructure software, including data/AI, developer tools and cybersecurity; consumer technology; and industrial technology and life-science tools. Finally, the new pools of capital will allow the firm to continue expanding its focus on “majority-growth” investments, deals in which the firm takes majority-ownership stakes in growth companies, both bootstrapped and venture-backed. Battery has been backing such companies since 2008 and, since then, has completed majority-growth investments across 17 platform companies. Eight of those of those investments were made in the last three years.The firm pursues a collaborative, research-driven style of investing and operates as one global team from offices in Boston, San Francisco, Menlo Park, New York, London and Tel Aviv.Battery has invested in more than 450 companies globally since its inception, excluding seed-stage deals, resulting in 73 total IPOs and 195 M&A events. Eight of the firm’s companies staged IPOs in 2021, and 13 had M&A exits. The portfolio companies that went public last year were Affirm, Amplitude, Braze, Coinbase, Confluent, Olo, Scodix and Sprinklr.In conjunction with the new funds, Zack Smotherman has been promoted to general partner, joining Jesse Feldman and Michael Brown, among others. He will continue to grow the firm’s efforts investing in the industrial-technology and life-science tools market. In addition, Battery’s Shiran Shalev, based in Tel Aviv, was promoted to partner. Shalev joined Battery in 2013 and focuses on venture- and growth-stage investments in financial technology and business software.Battery also recently hired veteran technology-sales executive Bill Binch as an operating partner and promoted several professionals in its growing portfolio-services and operations group. These include Karen Bommart, now investor-relations partner; Rebecca Buckman, marketing partner; Scott Goering, business-development partner; and Jenny Kang and Susanne Richman, now both talent partners. Additionally, Max Schireson—the former CEO of MongoDB who has been serving as a Battery executive-in-residence since 2015—was named operating partner.14/07/2022
