Version One Ventures, the Vancouver, B.C.-based early stage venture firm led by Boris Wertz, has raised $108 million across two new funds.
The firm announced Tuesday that it closed Version One Fund V, a $78 million fund focused on pre-seed and seed investments, along with Opportunities Fund III, a $30 million fund designed to make follow-on investments in its most promising portfolio companies.
The new funds represent a modest increase from the firm’s previous fundraising effort in 2021, when Version One raised $100 million across two funds.
Founded in 2012, Version One has long maintained close ties to the Seattle startup ecosystem.
As GeekWire previously reported, Wertz has consistently identified Seattle as one of the firm’s most important markets, alongside Vancouver and other emerging technology hubs.
Key investments in the Seattle area include Outreach and Inflection.io, and Wertz tells GeekWire he’s hoping to do more in the region with the new funds now locked down. The firm previously backed Seattle area startups such as Cap Hill Brands, Demandstar, Dolly, Pienza, Julep, Front Desk, Yapta and Dwellable.
In announcing the new funds, Wertz said the firm’s focus continues to evolve alongside major technology shifts, particularly in AI infrastructure and applications, robotics, deep tech and biology.
“The founders we are most excited about are not simply chasing trends,” Wertz wrote in a blog post. “They are deeply mission-driven people with unusual insight, long-term conviction, and an almost obsessive desire to solve a problem they understand intimately.”
The firm said it will continue leading or co-leading pre-seed and seed rounds globally, arguing that some of the most important companies of the next decade will initially appear unconventional, misunderstood, or simply too early.
In 1999, Wertz co-founded JustBooks, which at the time was the largest European internet marketplace for used, rare and out-of-print books. He then served as COO of AbeBooks for five years, which sold to Amazon in 2008.
Other Seattle-area venture capital firms have raised capital in the past 18 months, including Founders Co-op; Ascend, Flying Fish, AI2 Incubator and Graham & Walker. Longtime Seattle firm Madrona raised $770 million for its new funds in January 2025.
