WovenEarth Ventures Closes $155M Cleantech Fund II

WovenEarth Ventures closed WovenEarth Fund II at $155M on May 29, 2026, then announced the final close on August 12. The Palo Alto investment firm now reports more than $330M in total assets under management, giving it a larger base for a strategy built around US early-stage cleantech.

Fund II is structured to provide exposure to more than 250 companies through commitments to selected venture funds and direct co-investments. WovenEarth said the vehicle had committed to 7 funds and completed 20 co-investments, with roughly one-third of investable capital reserved for co-investing alongside its managers.

What WovenEarth Ventures Closed

The $155M final close gives WovenEarth a second institutional vehicle for a portfolio design that sits between a traditional fund of funds and a direct venture strategy. Rather than selecting only individual startups or only outside managers, the firm uses fund commitments to build broad early-stage coverage and co-investments to increase exposure where it sees stronger conviction.

WovenEarth grouped Fund II's opportunity set across energy, industry, and resilience. The announced portfolio spans geothermal energy, battery storage, critical minerals, robotics, and orchestration software, sectors increasingly connected by power demand, domestic manufacturing, and the cost of physical disruption.

Who Backed WovenEarth Fund II

Returning investors named by WovenEarth include The Pennsylvania State University, Glenmede, Mortenson Family Foundation, and M.A. Mortenson Companies. J.M. Huber Corporation joined Fund II alongside additional foundations and family offices that the firm did not individually identify.

The current WovenEarth team is led by Managing Partner Jane Woodward and General Partner Denise Miller. The official roster also includes partners Trina Van Pelt and Alicia Virtue, senior advisors Mauricia Geissler and Natasha Skok, and specialists across investing, investor relations, data, and operations.

Why the Structure Matters

Cleantech is not one market wearing a convenient green badge. The technical, regulatory, and capital needs of geothermal power look different from those of battery materials, industrial robotics, or software that coordinates energy systems, which makes specialist judgment valuable but creates a difficult sourcing problem for institutional investors.

WovenEarth's answer is to treat access as a portfolio-construction problem. Fund commitments provide relationships with specialist managers and a wider startup funnel, while co-investments allow the firm to place more capital behind selected companies without pretending that every opportunity deserves equal weight.

That design also changes the tradeoff between diversification and conviction. Broad exposure can reduce dependence on a single technology or manager, while a dedicated co-investment pool preserves the ability to lean into individual opportunities that survive deeper diligence.

From Fund I to Fund II

WovenEarth Fund I reached a $152M final close on January 31, 2024. In its Fund I announcement, the firm said that vehicle had committed to 13 US early-stage climate-tech managers and sought eventual exposure to more than 300 underlying companies.

Fund II keeps the diversified thesis but presents a tighter operating snapshot at close: 7 fund commitments, 20 co-investments, more than 250 targeted company exposures, and roughly one-third of investable capital reserved for direct opportunities. The numbers suggest a deliberate split between manager selection and company selection rather than a simple sequel with a larger pool of capital.

The Market Context for a $155M Close

Climate-focused venture fundraising has been selective. An August 2025 Venture Capital Journal report noted that US climate venture firms closed only 23 vehicles in 2024, the lowest total in 15 years, and that more than 65% raised less than $100M, making institutional closes above that threshold harder to dismiss as routine.

That context does not guarantee Fund II's returns, and WovenEarth has not disclosed audited performance for the new vehicle. It does show that foundations, family offices, corporations, and an endowment were willing to back a diversified early-stage strategy during a period when limited partners were asking managers to prove more than thematic enthusiasm.

What WovenEarth Calls Cleantech 2.0

WovenEarth's current thesis frames cleantech as an economic category tied to how the world is powered, built, and protected. The firm's investment platform highlights companies working on grid-scale storage, critical-mineral processing, geothermal power, industrial heat, wildfire intelligence, and AI-related power infrastructure.

The common thread is not a marketing label. It is a set of expensive, physical constraints: rising electricity demand, supply-chain security, manufacturing capacity, and exposure to extreme weather. Companies that reduce those costs can compete on productivity and resilience even when buyers are not shopping for a climate narrative.

What the Fund Close Signals

The close signals continued institutional interest in early-stage cleantech, but the more useful takeaway is structural. A fragmented market creates room for an intermediary that can evaluate specialist managers, build a broad portfolio, and still reserve capital for direct conviction bets.

For founders and venture managers, that model adds another channel of aligned capital without requiring WovenEarth to act like a single-sector lead investor in every deal. For LPs, it packages a difficult sourcing and diligence problem into a portfolio designed to span the infrastructure, industrial, and resilience systems now colliding with AI growth and domestic manufacturing priorities.

WovenEarth Fund II still has to turn that architecture into performance, and no fund close settles that question. What the $155M close does establish is that the firm has assembled a meaningful institutional base for its thesis that cleantech exposure works better as a carefully woven system than as one oversized bet.