Spencer Trask & Co. Backed Venture Ultra Capital LLC Accepts New Capitalization

News provided by

Oct 25, 2018, 17:16 ET

OLD GREENWICH, Conn., Oct. 25, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Spencer Trask & Co. backed venture Ultra Capital LLC (Ultra), a private equity firm focused on creating sustainable agriculture, energy, waste and water projects at scale, has accepted new investment from Philadelphia-based private equity fund LL Funds. As a result of this transaction, LL Funds is now the anchor equity investor in the next multi-hundred million dollar Ultra fund. Spencer Trask affiliates served as a majority equity investor in Ultra, second only to Tiger Management LLC.

Ultra previously assembled and invested more than $200 million in sustainable infrastructure projects and has a $1.2 billion pipeline. The new capitalization will allow LL Funds and other institutional investors to participate in this pipeline and in future sustainable real asset opportunities created by Ultra.

"Too many renewable initiatives begin with the best of intentions, but lack the financial sophistication to deploy large amounts of capital in a disciplined manner, said Kevin Kimberlin, Chairman of Spencer Trask & Co. and a founding member of Ultra Capital. "Ultra was established to do well by doing good, and it has proven that financially prudent sustainability can be a winning combination."

Ultra is well positioned to deliver on its promise with the finance industry's most esteemed investment professionals leading the company. Ultra Directors include Philip Duff who previously served as COO and Managing Director of Tiger Management, CFO of Morgan Stanley and CEO of Front Point Partners; Edward J. Mathias was a founding participant and a director of The Carlyle Group, member of the management committee and a Director of T.Rowe Price Associates, and co-founder of the venture capital firm, New Enterprise Associates.

The Managing Director and Co-CIO of Ultra is Ian Copeland, the former President of Renewable Power at Bechtel Power and Managing Director of Bechtel Enterprises. Joining him is Roberto M. Sella, founder of LL Funds and former Managing Director, Co-Head of Fixed Income, and Portfolio Manager at Morgan Stanley Investment Management Inc.

"Local sustainability is the ideal way to efficiently manage water, agriculture, waste and energy resources," said Kimberlin. I would personally like to thank Roberto and his team at LL for helping Ultra make the world a better place with proven, local, renewable systems."

The other founding members of Ultra Capital include Andy Klein, co-founder of Skybridge, an alternative asset and hedge fund manager organizer of the Skybridge Alternatives (SALT) Conferences; Roland Van Der Meer, Principal of two sustainable real asset firms, Biological Capital and Equilibrium Capital; and Erik Jansen, the founder and Portfolio Manager of the venture capital division of Pequot Capital.

About Ultra

Ultra Capital finances small to mid-size distributed infrastructure projects in the agriculture, energy, waste, and water sectors. We are committed to delivering value from sustainable real asset projects transparently with a focus on efficiency and reuse. The company is based in San Francisco, California.

About Spencer Trask

Spencer Trask & Co. is a privately held advanced technology development firm that helps entrepreneurs incubate high impact ventures that change the world. The firm has been instrumental in launching companies working in artificial intelligence, genomics, healthcare technology, mobile technology, the Internet and Open Innovation. Please visit www.spencertraskco.com for more information.

SOURCE Spencer Trask & Co.