Pangaea Ventures, a Canada-based venture capital firm focused on early-stage companies in advanced materials, has made a $50m first close on its third fund with a host of corporations as investors.
As part of the fundraise, Keith Gillard has joined Pangaea as a general partner after previously managing chemicals company BASF’s corporate venturing operations out of Silicon Valley, California.
Limited partners (LPs) in Pangaea Ventures Fund III, which is targeting $100m, include Asahi Glass Company, Asahi Kasei Innovation Partners, Bekaert, 9th Street Investments (a CoorsTek affiliate), JSR, Mitsubishi Chemical, Murata Manufacturing Company, Nitto Denko and Sabic Ventures.
Chris Erickson, general partner of Pangaea, said: "Our proprietary deal flow and sharp mandate have attracted some of the world’s most successful companies as our limited partners. As a result, our portfolios enjoy tremendous advantages with access to markets, suppliers, and expert assistance that would normally be available only to Fortune 500 companies."
He added by email: "We just sold a company last week for a significant positive return. The press release will be going out in a week or so."
Pangaea said its other LPs have included BASF, Solvay, Toyota Tsusho and Umicore but they had yet to commit to the latest fund. Pangaea Ventures Fund II closed at $32m in August 2008 with strategic LPs from Asahi Glass, Umicore, Bekaert, BASF Venture Capital, Solvay, Ciba Specialty Chemicals and Toyota Tsusho America.
Since the second fund, the firm has hired Leonid Molchanovsky from technology company Vocord Group as a partner, promoted Andrew Haughian to partner from associate and recruited Sarah Applebaum as an associate.