About This Fund
Fitz Gate Ventures Fund III is the third venture capital fund of Houston-based Fitz Gate Ventures, co-founded by Jim Cohen and Mark Poag, who bring combined backgrounds from investment banking, corporate law, private equity, and software entrepreneurship. The fund completed its close in December 2025, with Rice University's Office of Innovation serving as anchor limited partner — deepening the firm's institutional relationship with one of its home universities and validating its university technology transfer thesis.
Building on the deep-tech investment strategy refined across Funds I and II, Fund III concentrates on seed-stage hard tech and deep tech companies commercialising intellectual property from elite US research universities, including Princeton, Yale, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Virginia Tech, Baylor College of Medicine, and Vanderbilt University. The fund targets initial check sizes of $500,000 to $1 million with reserves for follow-on participation. Priority sectors include semiconductors and photonics, metamaterials, quantum computing, and other university-derived technologies with high barriers to replication. Fitz Gate deploys capital as lead investor, co-investor, or independent backer depending on deal structure.
Fitz Gate's prior funds each produced one unicorn exit: Fund I's seed investment in Quantum Circuits, Inc. led to a $550 million acquisition by D-Wave Systems (QBTS). Fund II's seed investment in Celestial AI — a photonic fabric startup — resulted in a sale to Marvell Technology (MRVL) for up to $5.5 billion, announced in December 2025. These back-to-back unicorn exits underpin Fund III's thesis that the convergence of university IP and patient seed capital can produce outsized returns from deep science.