Colorado PERA invests $50M in Foundry Group’s new $500M fund

BOULDER — Local venture-capital firm Foundry Group this week closed on a new $500 million fund that will allow the company to invest in growth-stage companies outside its existing portfolio.

Boulder-based Foundry Group unveiled its FG Next strategy in December and brought Lindel Eakman onboard as managing director of FG Next. In April, Foundry Group disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it was raising the new $500 million fund.

The new fund is Foundry’s sixth. The firm just last year closed on its fifth $225 million investment fund.

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Foundry’s partners wrote in a blog post this week that the Foundry Group Next fund aligns with the Foundry Group Select fund strategy of providing growth investments for startups from its early-stage funds. But the new fund will also invest in growing companies that the firm has not previously invested in as well.

“By opening our investment activities to include a small number of growth investments outside of Foundry Group companies, we can take further advantage of the work we’ve done to become experts in our key themes,” Foundry’s partners wrote in the blog post.

Foundry Group is welcoming a few new limited partners with the new fund. A spokesperson for the Colorado Public Employees’ Retirement Association said Friday that PERA’s private equity class investment group invested $50 million in Foundry’s new fund.