Introducing Cantos 3: $50M to Back Near Frontier Startups

By Ian Rountree, Founder & General Partner

From a young age I’ve been acutely aware of our own humanity and the existential dilemmas that we face. Losing a parent as a kid gives you a heavy dose of gestalt. At least, it did for me, and that sense sent me on a winding path to venture capital and a focus on “deep tech”. I studied international relations, worked in non-profits, in corporate environments, hospitals, and startups, but none of that felt quite right. I came to view tech entrepreneurship as the modern day hero’s journey, but I didn’t want to be the main character. Instead, I wanted to play a supporting role for as many founders as I could, and that led me to begin angel investing with my savings that I thought would go to business school. I call it my street MBA in venture capital. Luck was with me and in 2016 I founded Cantos with an inaugural $4M fund.

Six years later, we’re now sharing details of Cantos 3 — a $50M fund to back what we call “near frontier” startups that have the potential to mitigate climate change, disease, armed conflict, poverty, and existential risk on a global scale.

Cantos 3 will triple down on pre-seed and seed-stage investments in deeply technical climate, TechBio, aerospace, and next-gen computing startups. Because we specialize in taking technical risk alongside founders and will tolerate more of it than other venture firms, we seek to minimize market risk. We look for companies making commodities cheaper and with a lower carbon footprint, raising the standard of care, or improving the defense capabilities of democratic nations. We believe the largest companies can also have the biggest positive impact on people and our shared planet when stewarded well, so we aim to back entrepreneurs with the ambition to build $10B to $100B companies and beyond. Our thesis is that such companies will either offer platform potential or be full-stack. We view our founder partners as the new industrialists.

This new fund has allowed us to build out the team to further support near frontier founders. Cantos isn’t a one-man show anymore. We now have our bio Analyst Amee Kapadia, hardtech Analyst Andrew Kirima, Talent Partner Natalie Estrella, and CFO Ha Nguyen.

Despite truisms like “hardware is hard”, “deep tech is more capital intensive”, and VCs’ fear of regulatory risk, we have proven investing in deep tech can be just as, if not more, lucrative . With Cantos 1 and 2, our funds have already seen more than 3x TVPI (unrealized) — with two investments at more than 30x, two at 20x, another five over 10x, and seven more at 5x. This is why Cantos 3 is more than three times the size of our second fund, which totaled $15M.

Cantos exists to dispel the myth that solving the world’s biggest problems and producing return on investment are mutually exclusive. It takes massive companies to have global impact. Since we seek out companies that have the potential to benefit billions of people in our lifetime, we have to believe all of our investments have the potential for 100x returns or more. Many companies we work with today are on track to get there. We’ve invested in over 50 deep tech startups to-date. Several have gone on to become unicorns and many more are growing revenue quickly, challenging misconceptions about the financial potential for investing in hardware and bio.

Here are a few examples of Cantos investments that showcase the kinds of businesses we’re most excited about.

• Astranis is making satellite connectivity cheaper for billions without internet
• Atom Computing is a record-setting quantum computing company
• Faeth Therapeutics is a biotech using nutrition to fight cancer
• Fleetzero is decarbonizing ocean freight with electric ships
• Humane will transform how we interact with technology in the real world
• Mission Barns is an alternative meat company that uses cultivated fat technology
• Radiant is building zero-emission portable fission reactors
• Skyryse makes air travel safer and more accessible through avionics innovation
• Solugen turns sugar into chemicals, replacing petroleum
• Twelve transforms CO2 into fossil-free essential chemicals
• Venus Aerospace is a hypersonic defense and transportation startup

“ Ian and his team are always my first call. In fact, they’re typically a step ahead and often beat me to the punch, proactively offering support and advice. It’s clear that they understand and appreciate how hard it is to build a world-changing business. I’m glad they are on my team and they will be my first call if and when I ever start another business.” — Anand Parikh, Faeth Therapeutics

If you’re an early stage founder with ambitions to transform a critical industry, reach out to me, Amee, or Andrew on Twitter. If you’re interested in joining one of our partner companies, check out our jobs page. You can go deeper on our blog and our podcast, Near Frontier. There are endless opportunities to solve some of the most pressing problems on the planet while building generational companies, and we’ve only discovered a small fraction of the entrepreneurs who are going to change the world.