Virescent Ventures

Virescent Ventures is Australia's leading dedicated climate-technology venture capital manager, with more than $500 million under management across two funds and offices in Melbourne and Sydney. The firm was established in 2022 when its founding team, Partners Kristin Vaughan, Ben Gust and Blair Pritchard, spun out from the Australian government-backed Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), where they had been senior executives managing the Clean Energy Innovation Fund. Virescent is co-owned by CEFC and the founders, and continues to manage CEFC's legacy Innovation Fund portfolio alongside its own commercial vehicles, and it is willing to lead. The firm's thesis is laser-focused on the climate transition: technologies addressing the largest, hardest-to-abate sources of emissions across clean energy generation and storage, industrial and transport decarbonization, smart cities, sustainable agriculture and food, the circular economy, and critical-minerals processing. Across approximately 33 to 40 disclosed climate-tech investments the firm has deployed roughly $270 million. Named companies include Hysata, a capillary-fed hydrogen electrolyser that closed a US$111M Series B, the largest climate-tech Series B in Australian history; JET Charge, Australasia's largest EV charging infrastructure platform; Loam Bio, microbial seed treatments for soil-carbon sequestration; Novalith Technologies, CO2-based lithium extraction; Renewable Metals; and DryFlow Magnetics, its most recent disclosed investment in December 2025. Reported outcomes include one IPO and three acquisitions, with named exits AgriWebb, Carbon Revolution and GreenSync. Fund II had a first close of $100M in October 2024 with cornerstone commitments from Westpac and CEFC. Virescent backs Australia's hardest-to-abate climate solutions.