Portage Ventures closes $788.5 million CAD for third FinTech fund

(From left) Portag3's Executive Chairman, Paul Desmarais III, and CEO, Adam Felesky. Source Portag3.
Portage claims the early stage FinTech fund is one of the largest in the world.

Portage Ventures, the venture capital arm of investment firm Sagard, announced the sixth close of its Portage Ventures III LP. The VC firm said it has raised $788.5 million CAD ($616 million USD) to date, and claims the fund is now one of the largest early-stage FinTech-focused venture funds in the world.

With its latest close, Portage claimed that along with its Fund I and Fund II it now has $3.3 billion USD of assets under management as of December 31, 2021.

Commitments to the fund came from new and existing capital partners, including family offices, financial institutions, pension funds, and institutional investors worldwide.

New LPs investing in Portage III include HarbourVest Partners, Kensington Capital Partners and Meridian Credit Union. They join previous LPs in Portage III, such as Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments), and Eldridge.

Portage also announced that it is opening investment in a Portage fund to individual Canadian accredited investors for the first time. Access is available exclusively through Grayhawk Investment Strategies Inc. “We are constantly working with entrepreneurs and families who increasingly were interested in investing with us. We’ve created a vehicle for these investors and other qualified high net worth investors to participate via an access fund administered by Grayhawk,” CEO Adam Felesky told BetaKit.

This most recent close for the third fund took place on February 7, and Portage expects to hold the final close for Portage III in April 2022.

UPDATE 22/07/2022: Portage has since held the final close, pulling in an additional $39 million USD. Paul Desmarais, chairman and CEO of Sagard and co-founder and executive chairman of Portage Ventures, stated in a LinkedIn post that the fund had officially closed. This brings the total fund size to $655 million USD. It was reported by Bloomberg that the funding came from 34 institutional investors across nine countries, with about half of those backers being new to Portage.

RELATED: Portage Ventures secures additional $210 million USD for third FinTech fund

The VC said its geographic reach has steadily expanded in the United States and internationally since the firm’s founding in 2016. Its five largest portfolio investments (from its first two funds) by fair market value as of December 31 are Wealthsimple, Koho, Clark, Albert, and Alpaca, according to Portage.

Portage said it has deployed close to $110 million, with over half invested in US-based companies, and the rest covering FinTechs in Canada, Europe, Australia, and Israel.

Last year, Sagard also launched Portage FinTech Acquisition, a special purpose acquisition company that completed its initial public offering on the Nasdaq in July, securing $240 million USD after boosting its initial $200 million USD target.

Portage Fintech Acquisition aims to pursue one or more acquisitions in FinTech verticals like wealth and asset management, consumer and small to medium-sized enterprise finance, insurance, payments, information services, and FinTech infrastructure.

Toronto-based Portage invests in companies from early-stage, to growth-stage and beyond. The firm’s venture business includes its ecosystem partner, venture builder Diagram Ventures, which has Sagard, Power Corp’s alternative investment arm, as an anchor investor.

Portage currently has 62 portfolio investments in 13 countries.

Charles Mandel

Charles Mandel

Charles Mandel's reporting and writing on technology has appeared in Wired.com, Canadian Business, Report on Business Magazine, Canada's National Observer, The Globe and Mail, and the National Post, among many others. He lives off-grid in Nova Scotia.

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