Another Day, Another Two Nine-Figure Venture Funds Announced

Today a pair of freshly-announced venture capital funds have been announced. It’s a continuation of a trend that Crunchbase News has analyzed and commented on. Namely: there seem to be more funds, and bigger funds, announced these days.

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According to a pair of regulatory filings posted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the world of early-stage venture investment has two new funds, each focused on particular niches.

Sky9 Capital’s Third Fund

The largest announced today (so far!) is a $200 million third fund for Sky9 Capital, a Chinese venture fund founded by former Lightspeed China Partners managing director Ron Cao. The firm invests in early-stage technology companies but appears to be sector-agnostic in its strategy.

To that end, Sky9 Capital’s portfolio companies include (among others):

• Power bank rental company Energy Monster.
• Stickers-driven photo sharing app FaceU.
• Vertically-integrated cryptocurrency firm BTCC.
• Blockchain.com, a bitcoin wallet service.
• Meituan-Danping, which recently acquired Tencent-backed bike-sharing service Mobike. Crunchbase News covered that M&A deal as it happened.

Apart from the regulatory filing, there’s been no other information released in English-written press about the new fund and whether it will bring a strategic shift for the firm. Sky9 Capital’s third fund is fully-raised.

Caerus Ventures’s Second Fund

That being said, the second fund being raised by Caerus Ventures—an early-stage venture firm based in West Palm Beach, Florida—does bring a slight course adjustment. According to regulatory filings, the firm hasn’t yet secured any of the $100 million it intends to raise from limited partners, which will have to invest a minimum of $500,000 in the fund to join in.

This would be Caerus Ventures’s second fund and would exclusively invest in “hardware technology and the software that powers it,” according to the firm’s website. This is a departure from the strategy taken with its first fund, which “took a generalist approach to early stage venture capital investing.”

The mix of companies in the firm’s portfolio is rather eclectic:

• Grain & Barrel Spirits, a craft distiller.
• Socure, maker of digital identity verification systems.
• GuestDriven, a customer relationship management platform for the hotel industry, which was acquired by a competitor, Porter & Sail, in January 2017.

Caerus Ventures Fund II would also be a significant step up in terms of AUM. According to Crunchbase data, the firm’s first fund was $20 million and was announced in August 2013.

More Bigger Funds

On the one hand, one could say that two sizable early-stage funds being announced on the same day is just a coincidence. And, to be absolutely clear, it is.

But days like this seem to be growing more common as capital continues to flow into new venture capital funds around the world.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias