Early-stage venture capital firm Voyager Ventures has closed a $275 million second fund, sharpening its focus on energy, industrial systems, and climate technology startups across North America and Europe. The new vehicle, Fund II, reflects growing investor conviction that the infrastructure underpinning the global economy is entering a period of structural redesign rather than incremental change.

Founded in 2021 by Sierra Peterson and Sarah Sclarsic, Voyager Ventures has built its strategy around early investments in companies addressing hard-to-abate sectors such as energy, materials, manufacturing, mobility, food systems, and carbon removal. The firm positions these technologies not as niche climate solutions, but as core enablers of long-term economic resilience and productivity.

Shifting the Economic Base Layer

With Fund II, Voyager Ventures is expanding its mandate beyond decarbonisation alone toward what it describes as modernising the base layer of the economy. The firm plans to target technologies that reshape how energy is produced and distributed, how materials are manufactured, and how physical systems are optimised at scale.

In announcing the fund, Voyager pointed to three converging forces that are altering the economics of cost, reliability, and performance. Distributed renewable generation and storage are redefining energy systems. At the same time, the rapid decline in the cost of computation is increasing the power and accessibility of advanced digital tools. Finally, AI-enabled control systems are improving how machines, infrastructure, and industrial processes operate in real-world conditions.

Sarah Sclarsic said the firm is now seeing clear market validation for technologies that sit at the intersection of energy, advanced manufacturing, and applied artificial intelligence. According to her, demand is scaling for solutions that were previously considered experimental but are increasingly becoming central to how the global economy functions.

Read more: Google Joins $425 Million Capital Raise for Battery Storage Provider Redwood Materials

Focus Areas for Fund II

Voyager’s second fund will invest across a broad set of sectors, including energy and efficiency, materials production, software and AI, mobility, the built environment, and carbon management. The unifying theme across these areas is performance improvement rather than compliance-driven sustainability.

The firm is targeting companies that enable energy to be generated, stored, and consumed more efficiently, as well as technologies that allow core materials to be produced faster and with greater precision. It is also backing software and AI platforms that improve uptime, operational efficiency, and asset utilisation across energy, logistics, and manufacturing systems. In parallel, the fund will support innovations in high-performance mobility, long-lived infrastructure design and operation, and carbon capture, reuse, and removal.

Climate Technology as Economic Infrastructure

Sierra Peterson framed the investment thesis in terms of stability and resilience in an increasingly volatile global environment. She argued that much of the existing economy remains constrained by finite fuels and fragile processes that limit productivity and expose systems to disruption.

Voyager’s approach centres on backing technologies that outperform legacy systems on cost, reliability, and durability. In this view, climate and industrial technologies are not positioned as trade-offs between sustainability and growth, but as superior solutions capable of supporting both.

Explore OneStop ESG Marketplace: Renewable Energy

What the Fund Signals to the Market

The close of Fund II highlights how early-stage capital is increasingly flowing toward foundational technologies rather than surface-level applications. For founders, the fund underscores growing appetite for startups tackling physical infrastructure, materials, and energy systems, areas that often require longer development timelines but offer outsized systemic impact.

For investors and policymakers, Voyager’s raise reinforces a broader shift in climate tech investing. Capital is moving toward solutions that harden the economy against energy volatility, supply chain fragility, and resource constraints, while delivering measurable emissions reductions as a byproduct of better performance.

As energy systems decentralise, industrial processes digitise, and AI moves deeper into physical operations, Voyager Ventures is positioning its latest fund to sit at the intersection of climate transition and economic rebuilding. The size and scope of Fund II suggest that early-stage climate and industrial technology is no longer viewed as speculative, but as essential infrastructure for the next phase of global growth.

Explore ESG Solutions on our marketplace - OneStop ESG Marketplace.

Keep abreast of the top ESG Events on OneStop ESG Events.

OneStop ESG Educate: Your go-to source for top ESG courses and training programs tailored to your needs.

Stay informed with the latest insights on OneStop ESG News.

Discover meaningful career opportunities on OneStop ESG Jobs.