Juniper Ventures spins out of Climate Capital to invest in synthetic biology for the climate

There’s a mismatch in climate tech investing: Well over half of all dollars invested since 2020 have flowed into startups working on energy and transportation, according to Sightline Climate.

“It’s awesome to see those solutions doing well,” Michael Luciani, founding partner at Juniper, told TechCrunch. But as he points out, those sectors represent less than half of all carbon pollution.

“The big contributors are how we make things, the industrials and chemicals and plastics, as well as food and agriculture and buildings,” he said. “I have come to believe that engineered biology is the best emerging solution for the majority of problems in those categories.”

Luciani and Jennifer Kan, Juniper’s other founding partner, have been investing in climate for years, initially as part of Climate Capital, a prolific venture fund that typically writes smaller checks to early-stage companies. They invested in 30 companies and led the firm’s special-purpose vehicle investments before raising the new fund, Kan told TechCrunch.

Initially, Juniper started life as Climate Capital Bio, investing in synthetic biology startups that focus on climate. But “as we kind of got further down the path, we realized what we should lean into is the fact that we can be the climate biotech people,” Luciani said. “Climate Capital is a great brand, but it’s really a brand as a generalist, and that’s quite different than the kind of signal we wanted to send.”

The first Juniper fund is $10.6 million and is oversubscribed, the firm exclusively told TechCrunch. Limited partners include family offices, foundations, and Allocator One, an institutional fund of funds that’s serving as the anchor. 

“We also have a decent amount of scientists in the field who we’ve allowed to invest in our fund at lower minimums, plus over a dozen different partners of venture capital and private equity firms,” Luciani added.

Juniper operates as a normal venture fund, writing checks between $100,000 and $500,000 to scientists who are working to commercialize their research. The goal, Kan said, is “to be the first institutional investor, to help them think through how to build a company.”

Some of the fund’s early investments include California Cultured, which cultures plant cells to make more sustainable coffee and chocolate, and Cache DNA, which is developing a better way to store DNA and RNA. 

“We are building a lot of data centers, and they are not the most sustainable way for our world to grow digitally. If we were to store all the data in the world today in DNA, it would only take a shoe box of DNA,” Kan said. “The difference is massive.”