Deep Tech Investor DCVC Nets $725M For Oversubscribed Fund V

Back in April, Crunchbase News spotted a filing by DCVC (formerly known as Data Collective) indicating that the Palo Alto-based venture capital firm was raising money for its fifth flagship fund.

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On Wednesday, DCVC co-founding partners Matt Ocko and Zachary Bogue announced the completion of the fundraise, which they say netted the firm $725 million in fresh capital to invest in early-stage “deep” technology companies.

Fund V is markedly larger than the firm’s previous funds. DCVC’s fourth flagship fund, closed at the end of 2016, topped out at $212 million.

Fund V is also significantly oversubscribed—to the tune of 25 percent—from its initial target. The April 5 filing indicated that DCVC aimed to raise as much as $575 million. Fortune reported that the new fund’s limited partners include insurance funds, pension funds, charities, and university endowments.

Though Ocko and Bogue are the only general partners listed on the amended filing for Fund V, submitted to the SEC on Tuesday evening, there have been some promotions and additions to the firm. Kelly Chen was promoted from principal to partner. Alan Cohen, who previously held executive roles at Illumio and Cisco, and 8VC advisor Matt Michelson joined as partners.1 Kate Reed, formerly the director of public relations for Nutanix, joined DCVC as VP of marketing and communications.

DCVC is now one of the best-capitalized investors in the “deep tech” market, an expansive category which encompasses sectors ranging from industrial automation and cybersecurity, to computational biology, geospatial intelligence, quantum computing, artificial intelligence application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), and more.

In their statement, Bogue and Ocko say that the firm’s position as an early-stage investor “has consistently given us unique access to scientists and engineers using these computing ‘superpowers’ to attack previously insurmountable problems far beyond IT.”

They highlight a few of their current portfolio companies, including computational discovery company Recursion Pharmaceuticals, “molecular construction” and biological materials science company Zymergen, and Gro Intelligence, which aims to build “[the] Bloomberg terminal and platform for agricultural data,” according to DCVC.

The firm’s biggest exits to date include Square (IPO), Elastic (IPO), Zoom (IPO), and Nervana (acquired by Intel), among others.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias