Altira Group Drives Oil & Gas Energy Transformation with Closing of Technology Fund VII

DENVER, March 18, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Altira Group LLC ("Altira"), a leading energy-focused venture capital firm, expands its commitment to energy transformation within oil & gas and other industrial sectors with the successful closing of Altira Technology Fund VII. This strategic fund builds upon the pioneering legacy of Altira Technology Fund VI by expanding its partnership with tech-forward oil & gas companies, leading the industry toward a lower carbon and higher-return future through cutting-edge technology.

Fund VII boasts a powerful alliance, bringing together a unique partnership of seven industry-leading oil & gas companies alongside industry-experienced institutional investors. This unique partnership harnesses capital and domain expertise to provide entrepreneurial companies with unparalleled validation opportunities, real-world testing grounds, and potential customers.

"We're thrilled to have the backing of industry leaders who share our vision for enabling the next evolution of oil & gas, which we call OGNext^®," says Dirk McDermott, Founder and Managing Partner. "Together, instead of transitioning away from oil & gas, we'll not only empower the next generation of innovators to responsibly transform how we explore, produce, and manage energy resources, but we'll export technologies born in oil & gas to other sectors."

Focused on growth-stage investments in transformative technologies across the entire energy value chain, Fund VII targets key areas like:

• Digital Solutions – Unlocking new sources of value for companies and knowledge workers by enabling the past decade of big data, data analytics, and AI initiatives
• Automation – Combining digital advancements with real-world assets and equipment
• Emissions Reduction – Deploying new sensing, measuring, and emissions management technologies
• Strengthen Beachheads – Enhancing operational and financial performance across the legacy value chain of subsurface, development, & production.

"Together with our oil & gas partners, we can get ahead of technology trends, invest during the 'slope of enlightenment,' and work together to accelerate adoption. Portfolio companies such as ThoughtTrace illustrate this, where we invested and scaled this AI company ahead of the market, allowing our partners to exploit technology advantages and for the fund to realize a great exit and return", says Sean Ebert, Senior Partner.

This targeted approach underscores Altira's commitment to driving compelling technological advancement within the industry. Fund VII goes beyond financial returns, aiming to accelerate the diversification and renewal of oil & gas, lowering carbon, and enhancing the financial returns of their partnership. 

Altira has a distinguished record of recognizing and fostering groundbreaking technologies within the oil and gas industry. The following Fund VI portfolio companies are just a few examples of how Altira consistently identifies and nurtures technologies that push the boundaries of the oil and gas industry:

Seeq pioneered advanced time-series data analytics, empowering subject matter experts to leverage their years of experience with vast stores of operational data in a novel human-machine analytical and AI-enabled approach. 

FlexGen, born in the demanding 'edge' power management world of oil & gas, developed its HybridOS energy storage operating system and has grown to become one of the world's leading grid-scale energy storage technology & service companies, enabling and transforming the grid of the future.

ThoughtTrace, built its AI-enabled contract analytics technology around oil & gas contracts, deemed by many to be the most complex documents in the world. This advantaged technology allowed the company to expand far beyond its initial market and product focus to a much broader scope, ultimately being acquired in 2023 by Thompson Reuters.

ResFrac, offering the industry's only integrated 3D fracture and reservoir simulator, enables operating companies to maximize resource recoveries in traditional shale reservoirs and utility-scale deployment of baseload, dispatchable Enhanced Geothermal Systems.

iNet is unlocking the promise of the connected industrial landscape, providing complex 'edge' connectivity services blending the high-bandwidth solutions of 5G and low earth orbit satellites to collect the real-time data necessary for managing today's critical infrastructure industries around the globe.

"Our portfolio illustrates another novel aspect of our advantaged model; we are a relatively concentrated fund, investing in fewer companies than the more traditional venture investor with a fund of our size. This enables the Altira team to roll up our sleeves and work closely with our entrepreneurial management teams, helping them scale quickly, facilitating access to direct voice-of-the-customer feedback from our partners to refine and accelerate their product-market fit, and weather the bumps that all emerging tech companies experience," says J.P. Bauman, Partner. "The model works! All of our Fund VI companies are very successful."

Fund VII marks the next chapter in Altira's journey, leveraging its deep industry expertise and strategic partnerships to propel the oil & gas industry into a brighter, more innovative, sustainable, and impactful future.

About Altira Group

Altira Group, a Denver-based venture capital firm, has funded advanced technology solutions across the energy value-chain for the last 25 years. Working with their oil & gas industry limited partners, they enable the next generation of energy and industrial technologies, driving innovation across digital, industrial automation, climate, and core oil & gas operations of subsurface, development, and production Beyond capital, Altira's unique approach offers entrepreneurs unique customer access, validation and collaboration through their strategic partnerships with leading oil & gas companies and hands-on experienced business building as investors. This unique Altira advantage means more direct customer interaction, compressed adoption cycles, and stronger investment outcomes. For further information, please visit altiragroup.com.

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SOURCE Altira Group LLC