Renown Capital, a new growth equity firm with Moore Capital pedigree, has stepped out to specialise in investing in technological solutions for the energy sector. James McIntyre and Archie Soames are the firm’s co-founders.
After 20 years with Moore, McIntyre has spun out along with investment team partners Hunter Horgan and Cameron Scari. “While at Moore, we invested in both public and private markets. During that period, we built an expertise in technology related to the energy landscape,” McIntyre says.
“The technologies we are focused on solve problems for utilities and consumers,” he adds. “It’s not very different from enterprise software within large corporations in any other sector, but in this case, utilities can use technology to directly impact consumers’ energy usage and costs.”
The fund will have a global mandate but expects that most investments will emanate from North America and Europe.
The fund won’t have an ESG or sustainability label but McIntyre notes that most of the firm’s investments “will have a materially beneficial impact on things that people who focus on ESG are attuned to”.
This includes an investment in Bidgely, an AI driven software platform, designed to help utilities use their existing assets more efficiently.
“All of those things are ESG-related but not the core focus of our fund,” McIntyre says. “Our core focus is to generate returns.”
The strategy has been running within Moore Capital for well over five years and Moore is committing USD200 million in seed capital in a “clear indication of support”.
“We have a better ability to drive value within our portfolio companies by building a platform for this on a global scale,” McIntyre says. “We are raising capital with various partners that can help our portfolio companies in a meaningful way.”
One such partner is the UK’s Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), which has invested USD50 million. “With close integration, we hope to give our portfolio companies greater visibility in the market,” McIntyre says.
As McIntyre’s co-founder Archie Soames, head of business development, explains,
“We have a very broad group of people we are talking to, from strategic investors to energy transition investors to insurance businesses, who see it as a way to access a sector that is at the pinpoint of one of the world’s biggest problems today: energy stabilisation.”
McIntyre says that the firm is finding that it can speak to, and get a good reception from, both those interested in energy transition as well as legacy energy investors who understand the problems and see that they need solutions.
“Our message goes through to anyone who sees how much more efficient, and affordable, things can be with the use of these technologies.”
Says McIntyre, “The affordability of electricity to heat and cool homes is central to everyday living of Americans and it has become so much more expensive. Inflation is untenable in this sector, causing the interest in technology that can solve problems in real time to go up immensely.”
Renown is looking to raise a total of USD750 million and will have a launch portfolio of ~USD125 million.
