Blisce, led by Alexandre Mars, is raising €150 million for a climate tech fund, with Pierre-Edouard Berion heading the initiative and other investors.
Blisce aims to raise up to €150 million (approximately $162 million) for a climate tech fund, making it the latest venture capital firm to do so. Investment guru Pierre-Edouard Berion will head the fund, with Too Good to Go co-founder Lucie Basch lending her support as a venture partner.
Most people know Blisce as Alexandre Mars’s investment vehicle; it has its headquarters in Paris and an office in New York. Mars is a philanthropist-turned-entrepreneur.
He founded and sold several software startups in the early 2000s to major players like Blackberry and Publicis. Last time around, Blisce was able to raise $240 million, or around €225 million.
Blisce, Mars’s latest venture, is a traditional for-profit venture capital business that uses the B Corp moniker. Additionally, he established Epic, a charitable foundation that provides funding to groups working to combat climate change and eliminate health and education disparities among children.
It’s difficult to discuss Blisce without mentioning Epic because the foundation invests a portion of its income in Epic to cover its operational costs. Likewise, Epic has the support of the Blisce team, which has pledged 20% of its carrying interest.
Given that Blisce has invested money in multiple unicorns, including Spotify, Pinterest, and Headspace, it appears that it has paid off. The company has lately put money into Welcome to the Jungle, Sorare, and Brut.
You can see that the firm has not yet prioritized climate technology, and its portfolio consists of consumer tech companies.
Blisce plans to use the new fund to back tech companies that are making a difference in the fight against climate change, particularly in sectors that produce a lot of waste, such as the food, building, transportation, and energy industries.
The firm has recruited Pierre-Edouard Berion to lead its specialized team responsible for managing this fund, as previously stated.
Among the Parisian venture capitalists, Berion is well known. He was a partner at Raise Ventures after spending a few years as the head of investments at Eurazeo, where he was an investor in Zenly, Withings, and Vestiaire Collective.
Lucie Basch has a good familiarity with the Blisce crew since the company is an investment in Too Good to Go, Lucie’s business. According to venture capitalist jargon, she will stay on at Too Good to Go while also lending her support to the new climate fund as a venture partner.
To this day, Blisce is still seeking donations for its new fund; the amount they are able to collect will be fascinating to watch.