2024 has been remarkable for SOSV. In April, we announced SOSV’s $306 million Fund V, our largest yet. The new fund positions SOSV perfectly to continue our mission as “The First Check in Deep Tech^®” for human and planetary health.

No less important, our portfolio companies raised $875M in fresh capital, a strong improvement over the prior year. There were wins at seed stage, including Ayrton Energy (hydrogen transport and storage, $6.6M*), Cocoon Carbon (carbon capture for heavy industry, $5.4M*), Mesa Quantum (chip-scale quantum sensing, $4.9M*), Xias Bio (multi-function proteins $4.0M*) and Proton Intelligence (continuous blood potassium monitoring, $6.95M*), and big rounds at later stages, including Tidal Vision (chitosan solutions, $46.7M*), Prolific Machines (light-based biotech, $54.6M*), unspun (3D apparel weaving, $32M*), Windfall Bio (methane to fertilizer, $28M*), Avalo (crop resilience, $12M*),  Simbe Robotics (retail inventory robots, $50M) and Ten63 Therapeutics (computational drug discovery, $15.9M). Many more strong rounds are in the pipeline, which makes us optimistic that 2025 will deliver an even stronger showing.

It’s worth noting that in addition to our health portfolio, many of our best performers are in the climate category, which may surprise folks who say climate tech is dead. To paraphrase Mark Twain, those claims are greatly exaggerated. What’s real is the refiner’s fire confronting startups without a clear path to commercialization. As our founder and managing general partner Sean O’Sullivan noted in his remarks at the start of the October SOSV Climate Tech Summit:

“In the past five years it’s fair to say that investors, SOSV not the least, learned that magical thinking is a bad idea. There are no special market exemptions for climate tech in the real world. What works in climate tech is a better product, at a market price, that also happens to be a winner for decarbonization. That sets the bar very high, but anything else is a waste of time.”

Across the climate tech ecosystem, as well as in our own portfolio, we see incredible companies getting over that bar to transform and decarbonize industries. The right investments in climate tech are more compelling than ever.

In addition to raising SOSV Fund V, our teams delivered on SOSV’s strategic ambition to operate three state-of-the-art, deep tech facilities for our founders:

IndieBio New York  ⚗️🧪🧬

IndieBio NY’s 25,000 sq ft premier lab, event and office space at 7 Penn Plaza, which opened in late 2022 and hosted over 100 events this year, was joined by two new locations:

IndieBio San Francisco ⚗️🔋🧬

IndieBio SF’s new 25,000 sq ft office in San Francisco’s Dogpatch with bio-safety, food and chem labs, as well as extensive office and event space.  

HAX 🏗️🧪⚙️

HAX’s new 35,000 sq ft office in Newark, New Jersey with analytics, chem, mech and EE labs in addition to extensive office and event space. |  TechCrunch | 🎥 “This is HAX”

In another key strategic effort, SOSV General Partner Po Bronson and the 🇮🇪 Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) launched the $65 million Ireland Biomanufacturing Fund to invest in industrial bioimanufacturing firms ready to establish low-capex production facilities in Ireland for the EU market.

All that made for a remarkable year, and so did the ways SOSV pulled out all the stops to help our portfolio companies raise capital at a time when many VCs are in retreat.

Demo Days. Our programs produced four demo days featuring more than 70 SOSV companies and attended either in-person or virtually by more than 1,000 investors.

Investor Network. We crushed investor outreach thanks to relationships formed over the past four years at demo days, SOSV climate summits, virtual VC-Founder matchups, and in-person meetups.

Matchups. We produced four virtual VC-Founder Matchups. They attracted over 4,000 participants including 200 SOSV founders, yielding thousands of meetings and many grateful shout-outs. Our teams alone invested in 8 startups they discovered at matchups.

Climate Summit. Our fourth annual SOSV Climate Tech Summit, featured 100 founders and investors and attracted 7,500 participants. The programming featured many startups, including five SOSV portfolio companies: unspun, Neptune Robotics (ship hull-cleaning robots), Prolific Machines, TômTex (sustainable biomaterials), and Windfall Bio. All 36 main stage and breakout sessions are available on replay, featuring Amazon Climate Pledge Fund, DCVC, Khosla Ventures, The Engine, Gigascale, KKR, Prelude, and founders from Antora, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Fervo, Google, Sila, Sublime Systems, and many more.

TechCrunch Stage. In October, SOSV’s portfolio stood out at the world’s top startup competition, TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Battlefield. An incredible 4 of 20 finalists were SOSV deep tech companies:  NitroFix (green ammonia), SpiralWave (carbon-removal at scale using cold plasma), Level Zero Health (continuous hormone monitoring), Haptic (haptic wearable for accessibility)  and MDC (MRI-based robotic surgery).

Challenging years in venture capital come and go with financial and economic cycles. 2024 showed that SOSV’s unflinching commitment to deep tech for human and planetary health shines through even in the hardest times. We are always looking for new deep tech founders with world-changing technology and ideas who want to join SOSV’s unparalleled ecosystem for building great companies, starting from inception. Learn more.

(And if all that sounds way too serious, here’s the real story. 🎥 )

(*Pitchbook data)