WovenEarth Ventures has closed its second cleantech investment fund at $155 million, giving the Palo Alto firm exposure to more than 250 early-stage companies working on everything from geothermal energy to robotics. The firm, founded in 2022, says WovenEarth Fund II has already made commitments to seven U.S. early-stage cleantech funds and completed 20 direct co-investments, with roughly a third of its investable capital reserved for those co-investment deals.
The final close, announced by ESG Today, landed on May 29, and pushed WovenEarth's total assets under management past $330 million, according to a release carried by PR Newswire. Fund II targets early-stage cleantech companies working across energy, industry and resilience, with named investment areas including geothermal energy, critical minerals, orchestration software, robotics and battery storage.
A Fund That Fell Short of Its Original Target, But Still Grew the Firm
WovenEarth began fundraising for Fund II in November 2024 with an ambitious target of $300 million, recording its first close at just $81 million in July 2025, per New Private Markets. The eventual $155 million close is roughly half that original goal, a gap that reflects the broader venture fundraising normalization playing out across the climate tech sector in recent years. Even so, the fund drew in new investors including foundations, family offices, and J.M. Huber Corporation, alongside repeat commitments from Fund I backers such as the Pennsylvania State University, Glenmede, Mortenson Family Foundation and M.A. Mortenson Companies.
Those repeat commitments trace back to WovenEarth's first fund of funds, which closed at $152 million in February 2024 and allocated capital to 13 U.S. early-stage climate tech venture managers, including Lowercarbon Capital, Voyager Ventures, Volo Earth Ventures and Anthropocene Ventures, the same New Private Markets report notes. That structure — spreading capital across a curated group of specialist funds rather than picking individual startups alone — has become WovenEarth's signature approach to the sector.
Managing Partner Points to AI-Driven Power Demand
Managing Partner Jane Woodward said cleantech is fundamental to the future of the global economy, and that cleantech companies are no longer a niche investment category. She said cleantech can boost profit and reduce risk in areas including AI-driven electricity demand, domesticating supply chains, and rising extreme-weather costs.
That framing tracks with what is happening across the industry. Total U.S. venture capital investment in climate technology reached $26.1 billion in the first half of 2026, a 55% jump over the same period in 2025, driven primarily by urgent power demands from AI data centers, according to ESG Today. A separate Silicon Valley Bank report from April 2026 found that 52% of climate tech companies reduced their net cash burn year-over-year as gross margins improved, pointing to an industry-wide shift toward profitability that investors like WovenEarth are betting on.
Woodward's Decades-Long Run in Energy Investing
Before founding WovenEarth in 2022, Woodward spent 33 years leading MAP Energy, an energy investment firm she founded in 1987 that backed natural gas, wind, solar and energy storage projects, according to Sandbrook Capital. She sold MAP Energy's renewable assets to Global Infrastructure Partners in December 2020. Woodward has also served as an adjunct professor in Stanford University's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering since 1991, teaching energy and environment courses while sitting on the Precourt Institute for Energy Advisory Council.
Beyond the fund-of-funds structure, WovenEarth and Woodward have made direct co-investments in commercial-stage climate startups, including enhanced geothermal energy firm Fervo Energy, where Woodward sits on the board, as well as carbon technology startup DACLab and metal decarbonization startup Molten Industries, according to a report from Signal. Law firm Morrison Foerster served as legal counsel to WovenEarth on the structuring and final close of Fund II, the firm said in its own announcement.
Woodward's ties to Palo Alto extend beyond the investment world. In 2016, she established The Foster, a 14,000-square-foot non-profit venue in the city dedicated to wild environment watercolor journeys by artist-explorer Tony Foster. It is a smaller but telling piece of a career that has kept Woodward embedded in both Silicon Valley's academic institutions and its investment community for decades, long before cleantech became one of venture capital's fastest-growing categories.
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