Prelude Ventures
VC Fund
San Francisco, United States
Prelude Ventures is a VC fund in San Francisco focused on Software and Energy. Prelude Ventures invests in and supports early-stage startups with the greatest potential to mitigate climate change. Our goal is to help build the next generation of category-defining businesses.
- Total investments:
- 180
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 31%
- Last fund:
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Prelude Ventures invests in
Stages Prelude Ventures invests in
Countries Prelude Ventures invests in
Round sizes
Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
| See all 10 contacts → | |||
Round size
- Series A
- $6.8M–$33M
- Series B
- $9.3M–$101M
- Series C
- $19M–$128M
Investment Focus
Industry
- Software 20 (11%)
- Energy 17 (9%)
- Renewable Energy 12 (7%)
- Manufacturing 11 (6%)
- CleanTech 8 (4%)
Stage
- Series A 42 (23%)
- Series B 29 (16%)
- Series C 19 (11%)
- Seed 18 (10%)
- Funding Round 17 (9%)
Country
- United States 74 (41%)
- Canada 3 (2%)
Team
| Name | Title | Investments | Links | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Gabriel Kra
Managing Director
|
Managing Director | Total investments: 13 | Find email | |
Laura Baxter-Simons
Co-Founder
|
Co-Founder | Total investments: 0 | Find email | |
Bryan Shill
Associate
|
Associate | Total investments: 0 | Find email | |
Carly Anderson
Principal
|
Principal | Total investments: 0 | Find email | |
Eileen McMahon
Operations Coordinator
|
Operations Coordinator | Total investments: 0 | Find email | |
| See all 10 team members → | ||||
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Form Energy develops and commercializes a low-cost battery system that can store wind and solar energy for a long duration. It aims to make batteries that can dispatch energy for days, expanding the ability to supply electricity generated from wind and solar power to the grid.The company's technology transforms the electric grid by makingrenewable energy dispatchable year-round, as well as extending transmission capacity without building new wires, and replacing the need for conventional thermal generation. Its core technology was invented at MIT and is supported by investors which include Breakthrough Energy Ventures, MIT’s The Engine, Macquarie Capital, Eni Next, Capricorn Investment Group, and Prelude Ventures. Their team members are active learners who like working on tough technology problems that can only be solved with a combination of scientific innovation and hard work.Co-founders Marco Ferrara, Mateo Jaramillo, Yet-Ming Chiang, William Woodford, and Ted Wiley headquartered the company in Somerville, Massachusetts in 2017. | $750M / Series G / Aug 12, 2026 | ||
| Quaise is an energy company that is developing and commercializing novel millimeter-wave drilling systems to harness geothermal energy around the globe, overcoming the geographic constraints limiting this energy source today. The company was founded in 2018 and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. | $134.1M / Series B / Jul 07, 2026 | ||
| Thea Energy is taking a faster approach to commercialize fusion energy. The company’s fusion systems will create a limitless source of zero emission energy for a sustainable future.Thea Energy is leveraging recent breakthroughs in stellarator physics and engineering developed at Princeton University and elsewhere. The company was founded in 2022with the objective of building modular, utility-scale fusion power. | $100M / Series B / May 27, 2026 | ||
| Rumin8 is tackling one of the biggest contributors to climate change: methane emissions from livestock. The digestive process of beef and dairy cattle accounts for a full 3.7% of all greenhouse gas emissions, a huge contribution from a single source. With billions of people around the world relying on animal proteins as part of their daily diet,eliminating livestock methane production is a powerful lever in the quest toward a climate-optimal future.Rumin8 has invented a technology that has been shown to reduce the emissions from cattle by up to 95%. Our technology productizes the anti-methane compounds that occur naturally in plants and turns them into dietary supplements for livestock. The results are a reduction in methane emissions by up to 95%, increase in efficiency of the animal’s digestive systems, and more energy for the animal to growWe are on a mission to decarbonize hundreds of millions of cattle around the world so the global food system can take a giant step forward. | $3M / Venture - Series Unknown / Mar 25, 2026 | ||
|
UnblockPay
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$4.5M / Seed / Mar 25, 2026 | ||
| Rhoda is building a new class of robot foundation model designed to bring general intelligence into the physical world. By combining internet-scale video pretraining with closed-loop video predictive control, Rhoda aims to enable robots that can adapt, generalize, and operate autonomously across real-world environments. The company works withleading industrial partners across manufacturing and logistics. | $450M / Series A / Mar 10, 2026 | ||
| Zero Homes provides a digital platform that helps homeowners plan, design, and coordinate electrification projects for residential properties. It offers services for remotely assessing homes via a mobile app, creating tailored designs, and generating quotes for systems such as heat pumps, water heaters, induction cooktops, electrical upgrades, andEV chargers without in-home visits. The company connects these plans to installation workflows and manages project logistics, including contractor coordination and rebate guidance. Its tools aim to streamline the end-to-end process from initial assessment through installation with virtual consultations and software-driven design. | $16.9M / Series A / Feb 17, 2026 | ||
| Lunar Energy's mission is to transition homes to 100% clean energy. Founded in 2020, Lunar Energy is designing and engineering the world’s best clean energy products to electrify all homes and connect communities to form clean, resilient virtual power plants. The fast-growing, global company is delivering an ecosystem of all-electric productsto make our electricity greener, our air cleaner, and our energy more safe, secure, and reliable for all. | $102M / Series D / Feb 04, 2026 | ||
| Ripple Foods specializes in making non-dairy milk with just as much protein as milk and half the sugar. Ripple has 8x the protein of almond milk and half the sugar of dairy milk. It’s high in bioavailable calcium (50% more than milk), potassium and provides a good source of omega-3s. It’s lower in calories than milk and best of all, it has thecreamy, delicious texture our dairy-free friends are missing. No more thin, chalky almond/ soy/ cashew milk.It was founded in 2014 and headquartered in Emeryville, California. | $17M / Dec 02, 2025 | ||
| Copper is a a battery solutions startup. | $28M / Series A / Aug 27, 2025 | ||
| See all 180 investments → | |||
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FAQ
What does Prelude Ventures invest in?
Prelude Ventures invests primarily in Software, Energy and Renewable Energy startups, most often at Series A and Series B stage. Most of the 180 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
What is Prelude Ventures's check size?
Prelude Ventures typically joins rounds of $6.8M–$33M at Series A, $9.3M–$101M at Series B and $19M–$128M at Series C. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds Prelude Ventures participates in.
How do I contact Prelude Ventures?
Public channels for Prelude Ventures include LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and the website linked on this profile. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.
Who are the partners at Prelude Ventures?
The team at Prelude Ventures includes Gabriel Kra (Managing Director), Laura Baxter-Simons (Co-Founder) and Bryan Shill (Associate), among 10 team members tracked by Shizune. The Team section lists each member with their title, investment count and links.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Sep 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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