Automotive investing, poverty eradication, and education for blacks.

FM Capital raised a new $150 million fund focusing on the automotive and transportation sectors. Darry Finkton Jr. closed on a $200 million fund that will back founders from disadvantaged and under-represented backgrounds. Base10 Partners will route half profits from late-stage investing of a $250 million fund to create student scholarships and support university endowments at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). (TechCrunch)

FM Capital

First Move Capital closed a new, oversubscribed $150 million fund targeting the automotive and transportation markets. EVs, forms of propulsion besides IC engines, and enterprise software are of particular interest.

“We see there’s just a huge transformation going on with propulsion, a lot driven, of course, by government mandates around the world,” Managing Partner Mark Norman said. “Alternative fuels and distribution and related service infrastructure is going through a ton of flux right now. That’s everything from the technology going into propulsion in vehicles — that shift from internal combustion to in large part, EVs — and how that affects downstream service infrastructure, how it affects marketplaces like residual values, and how you estimate that and understand what a vehicle is worth over its lifecycle.”

Darryl Finkton Jr.

Darryl Finkton Jr. has closed on a $200 million tranche out of an ultimate fundraising target of $1 billion aimed at stamping out poverty. Finkton has invested $500,000 of his own capital in the new fund titled the EPMT (End Poverty. Make Trillions) fund.

The fund will provide venture capital to entrepreneurs from disadvantaged and underrepresented backgrounds who are addressing the pressing problems facing their communities. Any profits the fund makes will go towards helping the country’s poorest communities.

Examples of EPMT’s investments: Elpidatec, a telehealth platform aimed at treating opioid addiction; Commissary Club, a job site and social network for people with criminal records; Snowball Wealth, which offers free student loan planning to help people tackle debt.

Base10 Partners

Jamison Hill, Laura Weidman Powers, and Luci Fonseca have joined four-year-old venture firm Base10 Partners to invest a new, $250 million growth-stage fund titled the Advancement Initiative.

Hill spent six years with Bain Capital Ventures; Powers has co-founded or led numerous impact-focused startups and nonprofits, including Code2040; and Fonseca helped establish the Institute for Black Economic Mobility at McKinsey & Co.

Advancement Initiative will invest in companies that are about to go public and thereafter contribute half of the profits from each deal to HBCUs.

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