The fund is designed to give the most promising deep tech founders the capital and skills they need to take breakthrough technologies to market. The fund is intended to act as a lead investor, supporting deep tech hardware and software with capital and effective customer discovery.

Specifically, the fund will invest in technology emerging from the UK and Europe’s most forward-looking research centres and university hubs which is essential for establishing a sustainable planet. These technologies include the likes of quantum solutions, photonics and electronics, advanced materials, robotics, agtech, and artificial intelligence. According to Octopus, without investment, global challenges, such as climate change, resource scarcity and the need for energy security, will remain unresolved.

The fund hopes to provide an opportunity for global institutional investors looking to back some of the most exciting businesses on the journey to building a sustainable planet. The fund is looking to raise capital from a range of national and international institutional investors, including family offices, that can see the enabling power of deep tech; corporates, that are looking to invest early in the sector to gain competitive advantage in the long-term; and local government pension schemes, that are looking to grow their local economies. 

Zoe Reich and Rubina Singh are the General Partners for the fund. The team has invested in some of the region’s deep tech businesses, from UltraSoc, which was sold to Siemens, to WaveOptics, Europe’s largest deep tech hardware exit when it was sold to Snap.

Zoe Reich comments: “Building a sustainable planet will require much greater investment in atoms and less investment in bytes. Only the combination of hardware and software innovation will tackle this global challenge. We see a real opportunity in the market to be the go-to lead investor for deep tech hardware.

“We’re excited to be launching a fund that tackles one of the greatest challenges of deep tech commercialisation – customer discovery – and underwrite the technology validation pathway, while providing founders with meaningful capital to hit value inflection points.”

Rubina Singh comments: “We are in the midst of multiple global crises, with climate change being one of the biggest challenges of our generation. We believe that the companies we are investing in, and the innovation they are bringing, are what is needed to create the next paradigm shift in how we tackle these challenges. Greater innovation requires greater diversity of thought, and we are passionate about supporting diverse teams working on novel technologies. For a recent customer discovery programme we ran for deep tech start-ups, nearly 50 per cent of the applications we received were from teams with a female founding member and more than 60 per cent had a founding member from an ethnic minority background. Our ambition with this fund is to tackle both the funding gap faced by deep tech businesses and support diverse founders to create a truly inclusive net-zero future.”

Jennifer Ockwell, Head of Institutional, comments: “Our fund is investing in novel, protectable technologies at the most critical time, to spur them into commercialisation, and to enable wide-scale adoption. Investing at this point in a company’s life cycle is also the most capital efficient time, so there is a compelling investment opportunity.

“The investors we’ve spoken to so far have been attracted by the levelling up opportunity this fund presents. Our universities represent centres of excellence and innovation right across the UK. By investing in the research and innovation coming out of these centres, we can ensure that they become engine rooms of levelling up – maximising the regional potential across the country. With our fund and the team’s expertise, we can provide support to get these exciting companies to their next stage of growth, stimulating regional economies while addressing pressing socio-environmental challenges.”

The firm – which has offices in Chicago, Miami, and San Francisco – announced the completion of fundraising for three new buyout funds, with total capital commitments coming in at USD32.4 billion.

The three new funds are: Thoma Bravo XV Fund, which closed at USD24.3 billion and is the largest tech fund yet raised; Thoma Bravo Discover Fund IV, a USD 6.2 billion fund focused on middle-market equity investments; and Thoma Bravo Explore Fund II, a USD1.8 billion fund which will target lower middle-market investments.

In a statement, the firm said that all three funds had surpassed their fundraise targets, demonstrating “the strong support by Thoma Bravo’s diverse network of investors for the firm’s buyout strategies”.

“We are honoured and grateful for the close partnership formed with our long-term investors, and humbled by their continued support of our organisation,” said Orlando Bravo, founder and managing partner at Thoma Bravo. 

“This fundraise will enable us to further our strategy of collaborating with management teams to build leading software companies. Having invested in more than 400 companies, we have seen first-hand how our partnership with management teams can turn great innovators into great companies, yielding fantastic results.”

The firm said investments in the funds will follow Thoma Bravo’s established strategy and partnership-driven approach of applying operational and sector expertise to investments across healthcare IT, security, financial technology, infrastructure, and applications.

“We are energised by our investors’ strong support of the largest fundraise in Thoma Bravo’s history, and of the largest tech fund ever raised, all against the backdrop of a challenging economic and geopolitical environment,” said Jennifer James, managing director, chief operating officer, and head of investor relations and marketing. “We thank our investors for their continued confidence.”

Thoma Bravo said it has had an active year on both the buy and sell side, with buyout fund investments and realisations representing approximately USD38 billion in combined enterprise value. 

The firm’s buyout funds have invested in more than 400 software companies, and the group’s software portfolio includes over 55 companies that generate approximately USD20 billion of annual revenue and employ over 75,000 staff globally.

The firm said commitments to the funds were secured from its broad network of investors, including sovereign wealth funds, public pension funds, multinational corporations, insurance companies, funds-of-funds, endowments, foundations, and family offices.

Thoma Bravo is one of the largest private equity firms in the world, with more than USD120 billion in assets under management as of the end of September. The firm invests in growth-oriented, innovative companies operating in the software and technology sectors. Over the past 20 years, the firm has acquired or invested in more than 420 companies representing over USD235 billion in enterprise value.