Bill Maris, the former CEO of corporate venturing unit GV, has formally closed the first fund for his new venture capital firm, Section 32, at $150m, the New York Times reported yesterday.
Maris was the first chief executive of GV, the subsidiary of internet and technology group Alphabet then known as Google Ventures, when it launched in 2009. He departed in August 2016 and since then speculation has been rife over what his next move will be.
Much of the talk centred on investments in healthcare, a sector that Maris paid particular attention to during his time at GV, and by December he had reportedly locked in $230m for a healthcare fund that would also be called Section 32, only to pull out before the close.
“I left GV and knew that I wanted to start a fund of my own,” Maris told the NYT. “My whole career has been about building things from scratch. I just wanted to do it at a different scale.”
The new iteration of Section 32 will invest in healthcare technology, but as part of a wider brief that will include agriculture technology, and Maris told TechCrunch: “biotech and healthcare have gotten to be a bit too trendy of a space lately, and I am leaning back a bit while that trend plays out.”
Maris is the fund’s sole general partner and has not disclosed details about Section 32’s limited partners. The fund was originally set to close at $100m but Maris expanded its size due to “strong interest,” he told TechCrunch.