Member Spotlight: At One Ventures
For this deep dive, we spoke to Tom Chi, Founder and Managing Partner.
Tell us about your firm. What makes it different?
At One Ventures finds, funds, and grows companies that are using disruptive deep tech to upend the unit economics of established industries while dramatically reducing their planetary footprint. We currently manage $525M across two funds.
Unlike other climate venture funds, we do not consider carbon emissions as our only impact metric. We invest in companies that catalyze a new restorative and generative relationship with nature, which includes water, soil and biodiversity.
Our investment team is highly technical, with a depth of expertise across the physical sciences, engineering, manufacturing, IP and finance. As a result the level of diligence we are able to achieve as a group gives us an astounding amount of confidence in the deals we do execute, and we lead 90% of our first placements.
What defines your portfolio?
Our portfolio contains the types of breakthrough technologies that you might read about in the media and think: This changes everything.
We backed the first USDA-approved vaccine for honeybees, which pollinate one-third of the food we eat, including blueberries, broccoli, apples and almonds. By protecting them from disease, Dalan Animal Health creates unique value for the American agricultural economy.
You may also have heard of Colossal Biosciences, the de-extinction company that is bringing back the wooly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger and the dodo bird. The work they are doing has financial and environmental implications far beyond these species.
Ascend Elements is an advanced materials company that recovers 98% of the critical metals in used lithium-ion batteries and reintegrates them directly into EV batteries. Since we first invested in them they have raised over $700M and are in full production. (See the Building Better profile.)
Overall, our portfolio is full of “invention catalysts” which are technologies that not only improve upon the domain of the invention itself, but also have the potential to ripple-change entire systems of production and use. It is technology that makes us reimagine what is possible for living on a healthy planet.
Tell us about the current VC landscape in your geography/region.
There’s been an acceleration of capital into climate technology since 2020, but many VCs started with the assumption that they can “enterprise SaaS” their way through this problem. It’s enticing, because software is easy (on the wallet). You don’t have the kind of capital intensity that physical businesses require. Investors that either come with a background in hardware or get up to speed on it quickly are far better positioned to succeed in this space.
Now, we need improvements in the rest of the ecosystem around debt and financing for growth-stage companies, and we have to get more creative around capital for FOAK manufacturing facilities.
Given all that, there is still a macro-trend of capital allocations to climate, and we hope for that to continue. We believe that when these first-return profiles come through, it will be an influential moment for the way the next few years go. If LPs get better or comparable returns, it’s going to shift the thinking around climate tech investments. If we can perform or even better, outperform, it will generate energy and excitement in the private markets for a decade and set up the sector for the next cycle.
What are the benefits of being an NVCA member?
We’re focused on doing the best for our entrepreneurs, and we continuously use NVCA venture standards to build and strengthen trust with our interactions and transactions with our portfolio companies. The access to trusted best practices and educational resources has accelerated upskilling within our own team.
We’re also thankful for the work they are doing to expand access to under-represented groups and encourage diversity practices within our industry. Our own team is 70% either female, BIPOC or both. Within our portfolio, 40% of our companies are led by under-represented founders. It’s not just about demographics, it’s diversity of thought. Investing in founders coming from different backgrounds globally provides a multi-faceted and in-depth understanding of problems, in order to find tangible solutions.
What’s ahead for your firm?
At One Ventures is already known for portfolio support, with dedicated in-house resources for talent, marketing, patent strategy, and manufacturing and operations. We’ll continue to strengthen our platform team to support founders in the ways they need most. Right now we’re particularly focused on helping companies scale up their manufacturing, achieve superior unit economics, and get those commercial deals so they can successfully displace existing brownfield approaches.
It’s going to take a lot of effort to get to a point where humanity is a net positive to nature. Our goal is to help humanity 2-500 years out. We’re here for the long journey, even if it exceeds our lifetime.
