Canadian pension investment manager Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments) has backed a new Greensoil PropTech Ventures fund.
The Greensoil PropTech Ventures Fund II fund has so far raised close to half of its $100m (€82.6m) after receiving capital commitments from anchor investor PSP Investments and from other investors including an affiliate of Starlight Investments. The predecessor fund raised $59m.
The fund’s manager said the real estate technology-focused venture capital fund will invest in “technologies compelling to customers in the real estate sector” as it seeks to invest in US, Canadian, European and Israeli companies.
Alan Greenberg, co-founder and chairman of Greensoil PropTech Ventures, said: “As leading industry experts, we have been profitably bringing innovation and sustainability to the built environment for decades.
“Our diverse experience as real estate owners, developers and venture investors gives us an advantage unmatched by generalist VC firms. This unique vantage point will allow us to lead the industry’s adoption of the next generation of technologies – what we call PropTech 2.0.”
David Harris Kolada, managing partner of Greensoil PropTech Ventures and fund manager of GSPV II, said: “From its origins of largely hardware-focused technologies to reduce facility operating costs, proptech is exploding into a myriad of technologies, leveraging the cloud, machine learning and SaaS business models to provide real estate-specific use cases.
“With our new fund, we will be financing opportunities resulting from the digital disruption of the entire real estate value chain.”
Kristopher Wojtecki, managing director, real estate investments at PSP Investments, said: “The initial closing of Greensoil PropTech Ventures Fund II comes at a time of significant opportunity and adversity for the real estate industry and the global economy and the need for innovation has never been greater.
“PSP’s partnership with Greensoil, and anchor investment in Fund II, reflects our confidence in their proptech leadership and investment track record.”
Daniel Drimmer, founder and CEO of Starlight Investments, said: “At Starlight, we have been growing our real estate portfolio rapidly and sustainably to become the largest owner of rental units in Canada.
“We are excited to partner with Greensoil PropTech Ventures to source, finance and deploy solutions into our buildings. We believe our commitment to GSPV Fund II will help us extend our market leadership and generate high investment returns.”
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