Fitz Gate Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm, has announced the completion of fundraising for its third fund, with Rice University’s Office of Innovation serving as a key anchor investor. This brings the firm’s total assets under management across its three funds to approximately $70 million.
Fitz Gate Ventures III is structured as an early-stage generalist fund, with a specific emphasis on deep technology. An example of the firm’s prior deep tech investments includes Celestial AI, a photonic fabric startup that was acquired by Marvell Technology, Inc. for up to $5.5 billion this month. Fitz Gate Ventures II had led Celestial AI’s seed+ round five years prior.
The firm has a history of backing companies across various innovative sectors, including quantum computing, photonics, robotics, chips, and meta materials. Notably, Fitz Gate was the first institutional investor in Quantum Circuits, Inc. Its investment approach involves writing initial checks ranging from $500,000 to $1 million, with reserves for follow-on investments. The firm either leads rounds, co-invests, or invests independently.
Fitz Gate Ventures also supports startups that license intellectual property from prominent academic institutions such as Princeton, Yale, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Virginia Tech, Baylor College of Medicine, and Vanderbilt. A core aspect of Fitz Gate’s investment model is its “Friends of Fitz” network, comprising hundreds of founders, venture capitalists, university faculty, Fortune 500 executives, and subject matter experts. This network aids in sourcing and evaluating startups, and also assists portfolio company founders with introductions to customers, partners, and sources of capital, including other VCs.
Jim Cohen and Mark Poag, General Partners at Fitz Gate Ventures, have contributed to venture capital education. They have taught venture capital investing at Princeton University’s Graduate School and Rice University’s Jones School of Business for seven years. Both were recognized with the Clio Award at Princeton for their contributions to graduate student education.
