The new North America University Innovations Fund will invest in technologies coming out of federal research and university labs.
A new $100m investment fund is being set up in the US to invest in intellectual property from US national labs and universities, an area that the fund’s managing director, Jason Smith, believes is full of hidden gems. The fund is being launched as US national labs themselves are gearing up efforts to translate their research into commercial products and spinout companies.
The nearly $100m North America University Innovations Fund will be co-launched by Longview Innovation, a VC focused on the commercialisation of academic and national laboratory IP, and Anzu Partners, an investor in industrial and life sciences technologies with $1bn in assets under management (AUM). Longview Innovation joined Anzu’s platform in early in June.
The fund, co-headed by Longview CEO Michael Burychka and Smith, Longview’s managing director, has investment partnerships with around 10 federal labs and universities in the US.
Several VC funds as well as corporate venture capital units invest in technologies from US national labs. One is Lockheed Martin Ventures, the investment arm of the US defence contractor. Alison Perez, senior investment manager at the CVC, said her team is constantly in contact with federal labs, which all have tech transfer offices associated with them. “We look at government labs, which are constantly churning out technologies,” said Perez during GCV’s Symposium in London last week.
“Federal labs are a bit of a hidden gem. The government spends a tremendous amount of research dollars there,” says Smith. One advantage of investing in technologies from federal labs is that they are headed by employees who can focus on their research full time without the teaching obligations that academics may have at universities, says Smith.
The US Department of energy has 17 national labs that conduct scientific research in areas related to energy and technology. The number of spinouts from these labs has increased over the past few years with the help of accelerators such as Cradle to Commerce, based at the National Berkeley National Lab, in partnership with federal research centres Argonne, Oak Ridge and Idaho National Labs.
The new fund will incorporate Longview’s current portfolio, which has a mix of investments in spinouts from national labs and universities. Longview was previously the US arm of IP Group, a UK university spinout investor. It became independent of its former parent in 2018.
One of Longview’s investments is in Mobilion Systems, a spinout from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state. The venture has built an ion mobility technology pioneered by a researcher at the lab and which is useful for characterising proteins and analysing biomolecules. Longview helped build a team and spun out the company. Agilent, a US chemical analysis and diagnostics firm, subsequently invested in the company.
Another of its investments is EXYN Technologies, a developer of autonomous robot systems for complex environments, which was spun out of the University of Pennsylvania. The firm helped a researcher to carve out a commercial venture based on the technology to license from the US university. The company raised a $35m series B in 2022, with Indian corporation Reliance Industries participating in the round.
The launch of the fund comes as the US federal government initiates cuts to science and research funding, which may slow the pipeline of research from national labs and universities. Some funds have recently been launched, such as the House Fund affiliated with University of California Berkeley, which was set up to provide private capital to AI researchers as a direct result of the funding cuts.
Whitney Haring-Smith, managing partner at Anzu Partners, says the fund is being launched not as a direct result of government policy.
“Companies coming out of universities and national laboratories always need funding, regardless of the environment. And the promise of the potential of the technology that we have in universities and national laboratories is something that is one of the most compelling parts of American innovation,” he says.
