Costanoa Ventures, a boutique early-stage venture capital firm, recently closed two new funds – Costanoa Fund V, a $275 million early-stage fund, and Opportunity Fund III, a $119 million fund to invest in later rounds of its early-stage portfolio companies. With these funds totaling $394 million, the firm’s total assets under management surpassed $2 billion.
This announcement follows the recent VC funds, including an additional $500 million for Salesforce Ventures’ AI fund and a €200 million fund closed by SET Ventures.
Investment strategy
Costanoa Ventures invests in early-stage startups that offer solutions in the fintech, data infrastructure, applied artificial intelligence, and security verticals. In recent years, the firm has doubled down on critical sectors that help grow and scale AI’s use in business. With Fund V, Costanoa will expand its focus on Cybersecurity and Defense Tech.
The VC, which founded BuilderOps, gives entrepreneurs the support they need, and also helps them expand their networks. Costanoa offers a tailored, high-touch approach that early-stage founders need and value.
“Our goal has always been to be the best possible partner to incredible founders building extraordinary companies that can solve big problems,” noted Greg Sands, Costanoa’s founder and managing partner. “The huge leaps forward we’re now seeing in AI make this a tremendous time to be an early-stage investor.”
Appoints new General Partner
In addition to this announcement, John Cowgill has been promoted as its newest General Partner. Cowgill has built Costanoa’s cybersecurity and space practices and has led investments in category standouts like AppOmni, Cyberhaven, Muon Space and Kepler Communications.
“Costanoa is building the most founder-aligned early stage venture firm in the industry. I couldn’t be more excited for the extraordinary companies we’ve partnered with and the amount of innovation that still lies ahead,” said Cowgill.
Portfolio of investments
The VC firm is building a highly concentrated portfolio focused on outstanding technical founders. One of the firm’s standout investments in Defense Tech is Vannevar Labs, founded by two Stanford GSB students and incubated in Costanoa’s Palo Alto office in 2019.
Other investments in the sector include Cape, Auterion, Kepler Communications and Muon Space, among others. Its portfolio includes unicorns such as Demandbase, Quizlet, and Alation.
“Costanoa has been part of our team through all the highs and lows and every phase of company building,” said Nini Hamrick, President and Co-Founder of Vannevar Labs. “The Costanoa team feels like an extension of our team at this point, with a very different level of engagement than we see from other investors that is hyper specific to this early stage of company building. They are also just really great people who want to have a really big impact on the world, and we can’t imagine building Vannevar without them.”
