Ripple Ventures Unveils Fund IV, Pivots to Sovereign Frontier Tech
TL;DR
Toronto-founded Ripple Ventures has unveiled Fund IV, its fourth flagship early-stage vehicle since launching with a $10 million Fund I in 2018, backed by new anchor LP Northleaf Capital Partners alongside one of Canada's largest private conglomerates, with RBC and RBCx returning from Fund III. Ripple has not disclosed a target or closed size for Fund IV, continuing a pattern that started with Fund III (Fund I and the firm's second vehicle both had sizes reported at the time). The more interesting story than the dollar figure is the thesis shift: where Fund III leaned into B2B SaaS, developer tools and climate software, Fund IV's opening portfolio skews hard, toward a rocket engine company, a defense-adjacent dynamics startup, a biotech/preclinical outfit, and several stealth and frontier-tech bets, all under a stated mandate the firm frames around backing "sovereign capabilities." Read against the firm's eight-year fund history, this is the most significant strategic pivot Ripple has made since its founding, and it lines up with the broader 2025-26 push across Canadian policy and capital circles toward reducing dependence on U.S. supply chains in defense, energy and critical technology.
Key Takeaways
The sovereign-capabilities framing is the real headline, not the fund number. Ripple is explicitly organizing Fund IV around backing Canadian (and allied) frontier technology that reduces dependence on foreign supply chains, a thesis that would have sounded niche three years ago and now sits squarely inside Ottawa's own industrial policy conversation around defense spending, critical minerals and energy sovereignty.
The LP base has gone from friends-and-family to global institutional in four vintages. Fund I in 2018 was backed by individual Toronto investors (Lorne Gertner, Devon Wright, Michael Diamond). The second vehicle added family offices and specialty funds (Kimel Family, Belz Family Office, Round13 Capital). Fund III brought in RBCx and federal VCCI catalyst capital. Fund IV's anchors, Northleaf Capital Partners and an unnamed major private conglomerate, are a different tier entirely: global, multi-billion-dollar private-markets institutions. That's a textbook LP-quality escalation curve for a maturing manager.
Undisclosed fund size is now a two-vintage pattern, not a permanent one. Ripple's first two vehicles both had dollar figures reported in the press at the time ($10 million for Fund I; roughly $10-14 million initially, with capacity to $25 million, for the second fund). The silence on size started with Fund III and continues with Fund IV, which is worth watching given the firm is now working with institutional-scale anchors like Northleaf.
The named portfolio is unusually capital-intensive for a firm built on B2B software. A rocket engine company and a dynamics/defense-adjacent startup are a long way from Fund I's healthcare-software and blockchain focus or Fund III's systems-of-record thesis, and they're not check sizes you write casually inside a $250K-$1M pre-seed strategy without either co-investors or a willingness to concentrate follow-on capital aggressively into the winners.
Fund Overview
Fund Name: Ripple Ventures Fund IV
Fund Size: Not publicly disclosed (Fund I: $10M disclosed in 2018; second vehicle: ~$10-14M disclosed in 2020, capacity to $25M; Fund III and Fund IV sizes undisclosed)
Stage: True inception stage — pre-incorporation, pre-product, pre-traction
Check Size: Approximately $250K-$1M USD (per Ripple's stated current investment approach; prior vintages ranged $250K-$2M depending on fund)
Geography: Canada and the U.S., with startups built for global market ambitions
Focus: Frontier technology and "sovereign capabilities" — spanning aerospace/propulsion, defense-adjacent dynamics, nuclear/energy, biotech and preclinical drug development, alongside continued software bets
Key LPs: Northleaf Capital Partners (new anchor); an undisclosed major Canadian private conglomerate (new anchor); RBC/RBCx (returning from Fund III)
Fund History: From a $10M Toronto Vehicle to an Institutional LP Base
Ripple's eight-year fund history is a useful lens for evaluating how much has actually changed with Fund IV. Fund I closed at $10 million in September 2018, backed by individual Toronto investors, Lorne Gertner, Devon Wright and Michael Diamond, writing $250,000-$500,000 checks into early-stage healthcare software, enterprise software, blockchain, industrial services, media and real estate companies (OnCall Health and Tread Technologies were among its early bets). The firm also launched The Tank, a Toronto incubator space, alongside the fund.
The firm's second vehicle, variously referred to in contemporaneous coverage as an "Opportunity Fund" and as "Fund II," closed an initial $14 million CAD (about $10 million USD) in mid-2020 before being described that October as a $10 million USD initial close with capacity to reach $25 million USD, a discrepancy likely reflecting currency reporting and a staged raise rather than two separate funds. LPs included the returning Kimel Family alongside Belz Family Office, Round13 Capital, JDF Capital Partners, Bluesky Equities and Coinsquare co-founder Cole Diamond. The thesis shifted toward bridging B2B SaaS companies from seed to Series A with $1-2 million checks, backing companies like Rose Rocket and ZenHub. Top Hat co-founder Mike Silagadze joined as a venture partner in 2021, reinforcing the firm's operator-first positioning.
Fund III, raised through 2023 and 2024, marked Ripple's first clearly institutional round: RBCx came in as lead anchor LP, with Canada's federal Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative (via BDC Capital's inclusive growth stream) as a second anchor, part of a $25 million tranche split across five diverse-led fund managers. Dominic Lau, the firm's first hire back in 2018, was promoted to partner and relocated to lead a Vancouver expansion, and the fund's thesis narrowed toward systems of record, workflow automation and software enabling legacy industries to adopt frontier technology, backing companies including Voiceflow, Tread, Wisedocs, Cybeats and Wisely (the latter two have since exited). Fund III's size was never publicly disclosed.
Seen against that arc, Fund IV's Northleaf and conglomerate anchors represent the fourth consecutive step up in LP sophistication, from friends-and-family, to family offices and specialty funds, to bank and government-backed institutional capital, to a global private-markets manager. The sector pivot toward "sovereign capabilities" is the sharpest thesis change across all four vintages; even Fund III's move into climate and frontier-adjacent software was incremental by comparison to backing a literal rocket propulsion company.
Why This Fund Matters
Ripple has spent three funds building a reputation as one of Canada's more disciplined true pre-seed investors, writing small checks into pre-product, sometimes pre-incorporation teams and concentrating a portfolio around outcomes it can meaningfully influence through its RippleX Fellowship pipeline and hands-on post-investment support. Fund III's stated thesis centered on systems of record, workflow automation, and software that helps legacy industries adopt frontier technology, a squarely B2B SaaS and enterprise-software remit. Fund IV keeps the inception-stage discipline but visibly widens the aperture toward genuinely hard, capital-intensive technology: a rocket propulsion company, a dynamics startup with apparent defense relevance, a biotech doing preclinical drug development, and multiple stealth bets alongside the more familiar AI and software names.
The "sovereign capabilities" language is worth taking seriously rather than treating as marketing gloss. Canada has spent 2025 and into 2026 under sustained pressure to reduce economic and technological dependence on the United States, whether through tariff exposure, defense procurement, or critical minerals policy, and Ottawa has responded with expanded defense spending commitments and renewed interest in domestic manufacturing and energy capability. A Canadian pre-seed fund explicitly organizing a fund thesis around backing domestic frontier-tech champions, in space, defense-adjacent systems, and energy, is a direct bet that this policy tailwind translates into procurement, capital, and exit opportunities for the founders it backs. It's a thesis that only makes sense in the current geopolitical moment; it would have been a much harder pitch to LPs in 2021, when Ripple's own second fund was still chasing conventional B2B SaaS bridge rounds.
The LP upgrade matters just as much as the thesis shift, and it reads differently once you know the full history above. Ripple's LP base has climbed a clear ladder: individual Toronto investors in Fund I, family offices and specialty funds in the second vehicle, then bank and government-linked capital in Fund III. Northleaf Capital Partners is a global private markets investor with a much broader mandate and balance sheet than any prior Ripple anchor, and bringing it on alongside another large, unnamed private conglomerate suggests the firm has convinced a materially different tier of institutional capital that its inception-stage, concentrated-portfolio model can produce venture-scale outcomes, not just a well-run community program.
The unwillingness to disclose a fund size, now covering two consecutive vintages after two funds where sizes were reported, is worth flagging directly. It could reflect a genuine philosophy of letting the portfolio and LP relationships speak rather than chasing a headline number. It could also make it harder for outside observers, including prospective LPs and founders, to calibrate whether Ripple's check sizes and follow-on capacity match the capital intensity of bets like a rocket engine company, especially compared to Fund I and the second vehicle, where check sizes and fund totals were both public and could be sanity-checked against each other.
The Team
Matt Cohen founded Ripple Ventures in 2018 after a background in institutional finance and as a fintech operator in Boston, and remains Founder and Managing Partner across all four funds. Dominic Lau, Ripple's first hire in 2018, was promoted to Partner in 2022 and has led the firm's Vancouver expansion and its RippleX Fellowship Program, a 12-week program supporting underrepresented student and first-time founders. Michael Garbe was a managing partner alongside Cohen on Fund I and the firm's second vehicle; his current role at the firm was not confirmed in Fund IV-era materials. Mike Silagadze (Top Hat co-founder), Ryan Freeman, Emily Lonetto and Michael Garbe were named as venture partners as of Ripple's 2022 team roster; founders should confirm with the firm directly which of these remain active advisors for Fund IV. Katie Ko, who joined Ripple in 2022 through the Analyst Intern and RippleX Fellowship pipeline before progressing through sourcing, operations and AI-platform roles, is now an Investor at the firm and authored the Fund IV announcement. Additional current team members referenced around the Fund IV launch include Jay Lee and Alisha Pak; specific current titles for both were not independently confirmed from Ripple's own team materials at the time of writing, so founders should verify current roles directly with the firm.
Early Portfolio
Fund IV's publicly named investments span a notably broad and hard-tech-leaning set of bets: Canada Rocket Company (propulsion), North Vector Dynamics, Terranox AI (a Y Combinator W26 company), Daedal Systems, Blackletter, Asset, Green Abundance, and uRun, alongside two disclosed stealth investments. That mix, spanning aerospace, dynamics/defense-adjacent systems, AI, legal tech (Blackletter), and consumer/fitness (uRun), illustrates the wider aperture Ripple is now investing under relative to Fund III's tighter enterprise-software focus, and a much larger jump still from Fund I's healthcare-software/blockchain mix or the second vehicle's straight B2B SaaS bridge-round thesis.
What This Means for Founders
Canadian and U.S. founders building genuinely frontier technology, propulsion, energy, defense-adjacent systems, advanced materials, or deep biotech, at the true inception stage now have a credible, well-capitalized-on-paper option that has explicitly signaled it wants these bets, not just tolerates them as outliers in an otherwise software-focused book. Ripple's willingness to back pre-incorporation teams also means founders don't need a working product or revenue to get a serious conversation started, which remains rare even among self-described pre-seed funds.
Founders building conventional B2B SaaS should not read this pivot as Ripple exiting software entirely, Fund III's enterprise thesis and portfolio (Voiceflow, Tread, Wisedocs and others) remain part of the firm's core identity, and Fund IV's stealth and named bets suggest software is still very much in scope. But founders pitching outside the "sovereign capabilities" and frontier-tech framing should expect the bar and the pitch angle to have shifted somewhat from three years ago.
Fund Momentum Take
This is one of the more interesting positioning moves in Canadian venture this year, precisely because it's a genuine strategic pivot rather than a cosmetic rebrand. Betting a fund thesis on Canadian sovereign-capability tailwinds, defense, space, energy, critical technology, is a real wager that Ottawa's policy rhetoric on reducing U.S. dependence translates into durable procurement and capital flows rather than remaining a 2025-26 news cycle. If that tailwind holds for the multi-year horizon a pre-seed fund needs to mature its bets, Ripple's early positioning into names like Canada Rocket Company could look prescient in hindsight. If the political moment fades and Canadian defense and space procurement reverts to historically modest levels, a fund overweighted toward capital-intensive hard tech without matching follow-on reserves could face real portfolio construction strain.
The continued refusal to disclose fund size, now two vintages running after two funds where the numbers were public, is the detail I'd push Ripple on directly if I were an LP or a founder evaluating the fund: at some point, backing rocket engines and dynamics companies at meaningful conviction requires either a genuinely large fund or a very concentrated, high-conviction subset of the portfolio getting outsized allocations. Fund I and the second vehicle both disclosed numbers in the $10-25 million range without apparent downside, which makes the silence on Fund III and Fund IV read more like a deliberate positioning choice than a structural necessity. My bet is Fund IV lands meaningfully larger than anything in Ripple's history once the full picture emerges (likely in the $75-150M range given the Northleaf anchor and conglomerate LP), and that Ripple's next public moment will be a specific, named hard-tech exit or major follow-on round that validates the sovereign-capabilities thesis rather than another size-free announcement.
Frequently Asked Questions
How large is Ripple Ventures Fund IV?
Ripple has not publicly disclosed a target or closed size for Fund IV. That's a continuation of the pattern set with Fund III; the firm's first two vehicles both had sizes reported publicly ($10 million for Fund I in 2018, roughly $10-14 million initially with capacity to $25 million for its second fund in 2020).
Who are Ripple Ventures Fund IV's LPs?
Northleaf Capital Partners and an undisclosed major Canadian private conglomerate joined as new anchor LPs, with RBC and RBCx returning as investors from Fund III, which itself was anchored by RBCx and Canada's federal Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative.
What does "sovereign capabilities" mean in Ripple's Fund IV thesis?
It refers to backing frontier technology, spanning aerospace/propulsion, defense-adjacent systems, energy, and advanced biotech, that reduces Canadian and allied dependence on foreign (particularly U.S.) supply chains and technology, aligning with broader 2025-26 Canadian industrial and defense policy priorities. It's a marked shift from Fund III's systems-of-record and workflow-automation software thesis.
What stage and check size does Ripple invest at?
Ripple invests at the true inception stage, including pre-incorporation, pre-product and pre-traction companies, with check sizes of roughly $250K to $1M USD, though prior funds have written checks up to $2M for later-stage bridge rounds.
Who leads Ripple Ventures?
Matt Cohen, founder in 2018, serves as Managing Partner across all four funds. Dominic Lau, the firm's first hire, was promoted to Partner in 2022 and leads the firm's Vancouver presence and fellowship programs.
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