Good day. This is a time when climate change and environmental sustainability technologies are getting renewed interest from the venture community. Firms like Union Square Ventures and Sequoia Capital declared their interest earlier this year. This week Amazon.com Inc. announced the creation of a $2 billion fund. Chris Sacca and Sam Altman are among prominent venture investors with a keen interest in the space. 

Investors are learning how to avoid the problems that the first wave of cleantech faced, says Carmichael Roberts, co-founder and managing director of Material Impact, a Boston firm that just raised a $200 million fund to invest in materials startups in sectors including clean energy.

The key is to develop a business model that doesn’t require investing hundreds of millions of dollars in a manufacturing facility to test a product’s viability. Companies like Zero Mass Water Inc., in Material Impact’s portfolio, prove that it’s possible to make a “normal venture investment” and “build a real business and have real customers.”

Mr. Roberts was there for the first wave. As a general partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, where he worked for a decade until 2017, he was chairman of solar startup 1366 Technologies and served on the board of biomass technology company Cool Planet.

Another important factor for success, Mr. Roberts noted, is that generalist VCs partner with specialists.

And now on to the news...

Fund for underrepresented founders. Cincinnati-based Lightship Capital, a rare venture-capital firm managed by black partners, is raising a $50 million fund to invest in underrepresented founders in the Midwest, WSJ Pro's Yuliya Chernova reports. Candice Matthews Brackeen, general partner of Lightship, runs the firm with her husband, Brian Brackeen.

• While the venture-capital industry is competing to get into hot deals in Silicon Valley, Ms. Brackeen said she believes better returns await in overlooked businesses. “There’s market failure. You can really take advantage of it,” she said.
   
• Lightship has closed on $22 million for Lightship Capital Fund I, exceeding the original target of the fund. The firm has lined up an additional $23 million in commitments and is planning a second fund.
   
• Lightship’s purview is broad—the firm looks to invest in early-stage startups launched by people of color, women, veterans and people with disabilities. With its capital lined up, Lightship is starting to invest, and there are plenty of deserving entrepreneurs looking for capital, Ms. Brackeen said.

Stepping up private equity pace. The Orange County Employees Retirement System’s board of trustees has approved a proposal to ramp up its private-equity investment pace to reach a 13% target allocation to the asset class by 2027, WSJ Pro's Preeti Singh reports.

In recent years, the $16.9 billion Orange County, Calif., pension system has shifted its strategy away from a reliance on funds-of-funds to build out a core portfolio of commitments directly to private-equity funds.

This year’s commitments include funds managed by Thoma Bravo, Altaris Capital Partners and Insight Partners. The pension system aims to add around eight to 10 managers to the 25 firms that are already in its core private-equity portfolio, said Heidi Poon, managing director at Aksia LLC, Orange County Employees’ investment adviser.

Exits

Akouos Inc., an RA Capital-backed developer of gene therapies to treat certain types of hearing loss, plans to raise as much as $244.4 million through an initial public offering of about 12.5 million shares at an expected price of $17 each, a regulatory filing shows. RA Capital holds a roughly 7.3% stake in the Boston-based company, which would decline to about 4.5% after the IPO. Other backers include 5AM Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Pivotal bioVenture Partners and Sofinnova Investments. Akouos said it has raised about $162.7 million since 2016. 

Apple Inc. acquired Fleetsmith Inc., a maker of cloud-based software for small- and medium-sized businesses to manage Apple devices, for an undisclosed sum. San Francisco-based Fleetsmith was backed by investors including Menlo Ventures, Index Ventures, Tiger Global Management, Upfront Ventures and Harrison Metal.

Data analytics company Databricks purchased Redash, a dashboarding and visualization service for data scientists and analysts to do data exploration. Terms weren’t disclosed. In October 2019, San Francisco-based Databricks was valued at $6.2 billion after a $400 million Series F round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s Late Stage Venture Fund.

Sonder Inc., a San Francisco-based rentals marketplace for travelers, completed raising a $170 million Series E funding round, bringing the company’s valuation to $1.3 billion. Fidelity Funds, Westcap and Inovia Capital led the investment, which included participation from Spark Capital, Greenoaks, Valor Equity, Greylock Partners, Atreides Capital, Tao Capital and Lennar. Sonder hopes to close the round with a total of $200 million from investors in the next few weeks.

Poseida Therapeutics Inc., a San Diego-based cell and gene therapy startup, closed a $110 million Series D round. Funds advised by Fidelity Management Research Co. led the investment, which included contributions from Adage Capital Management, Schonfeld Strategic Advisors and Rapha Capital Management.

OJO Labs, an Austin, Texas startup offering artificial intelligence-based real-estate services, picked up a $62.5 million investment. Wafra led funding, with participation from Breyer Capital, LiveOak Venture Partners, Royal Bank of Canada and Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures. Russell Valdez, chief investment officer at Wafra, joined the company’s board. In addition to the financing, OJO Labs acquired residential real estate search site Movoto for an undisclosed amount.

Pipe Technologies Inc., a financing platform for software-as-a-service companies, added $60 million in equity and asset financing as an extension to its seed round. Fin VC led the funding, which included new investors Tribe Capital, Uncorrelated Ventures and Anthemis, along with existing backers Craft Ventures, Fika Ventures and MaC Ventures. Pipe also appointed Michal Cieplinski as chief operating officer and chief legal officer. He was previously at LendingClub and Fundbox.

Enterome SA, a Paris-based company developing treatments for glioblastoma and adrenal tumors, grabbed €46.3 million ($52.6 million) in new funding. The Series E portion of the investment included participation from SymBiosis, Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., Seventure, Health for Life Capital, Principia, Omnes Capital and Nestlé Health Science. The financing included a loan facility drawdown from European Investment Bank.

SevenRooms, a New York-based guest engagement platform for the hospitality industry, landed $50 million in Series B financing. Providence Strategic Growth led the round, with Managing Director Adam Marcus joining the board.

Hopin, a London-based live online events platform, secured $40 million in Series A financing. IVP led the round, with support from Salesforce Ventures, Accel, Northzone, Seedcamp and Slack Fund.

Polares Medical SA, a Palo Alto, Calif.- and Switzerland-based developer of a device to treat mitral valve regurgitation, completed a $40 million funding round. Longitude Capital led the investment, with participation from Decheng Capital, Endeavour Vision, IDO Investments, Earlybird Venture Capital and Wellington Partners.

SQream Technologies, a New York-based data analytics acceleration platform, fetched $39.4 million in Series B financing. Mangrove Capital Partners and Schusterman Family Investments led the round, with participation from Hanaco Venture Capital, Sistema.vc, World Trade Center Ventures, Blumberg Capital, Silvertech Ventures and Alibaba Group. Silvertech’s Charlie Federman and Mangrove’s Roy Saar were added to the board.

ClickUp, a San Diego-based workplace productivity platform, scored $35 million in Series A funding. Craft Ventures led the round, and was joined by Georgian Partners.

Derivative Path Inc., a Walnut Creek, Calif.-based cloud trading platform for interest rate derivative and foreign exchange transactions, secured $35 million in growth equity funding from FTV Capital. Robert Anderson and Brent Fierr, both of FTV, will join the board.

Librestream, a Canadian augmented worker platform for industrial environments, raised $24 million in Series D funding. Canadian Business Growth Fund led the round, which included participation from Export Development Canada, Pender Technology Inflection Fund, Emerald Technology Ventures and BDC Capital.

HelloOffice, a commercial real estate brokerage with offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles, collected $20 million in Series A funding. Point Ventures led the investment, with Initialized Capital, Founders Fund, SaaStr, House Fund and others also participating.

• Wirecard files for insolvency after revealing accounting hole.
   
• White House considers broad 5G intervention.
   
• Japan plans national champion to challenge Huawei.
   
• Google strikes deals to pay some publishers for news.
   
• SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son quits Alibaba board.

• Twitch reckons with sexual assault. (The Verge)
   
• Aurora’s trucking bet shows industry shift from robotaxis. (The Information)
   
• Waymo, Volvo partner to develop electric robotaxis. (TechCrunch)
   
• U.S. Attorney General William Barr’s interest in Google antitrust case keeps it moving swiftly. (NYT)

This newsletter was compiled by Matthew Strozier and Zachary Cole.

WSJ Pro Venture Capital is a premium service of The Wall Street Journal. We cover venture capital and the global startup ecosystem. Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The Team: Matthew Strozier, Tomio Geron, Yuliya Chernova, Brian Gormley and Marc Vartabedian.

Follow us on Twitter: @wsjvc, @tomiogeron, @ychernova, @BrianPGormley, @marcvarta.