University of Melbourne and Lockheed Martin have contributed to an additional $94.8m tranche for the Csiro Innovation Fund, bringing its total to $167m.

Australia-based fund manager Main Sequence Ventures has raised an additional A$132m ($94.8m) for its Csiro Innovation Fund 1 from investors including University of Melbourne, the Australian Financial Review reported on Tuesday. Aerospace and defence company Lockheed Martin, superannuation fund Hostplus and Singaporean government-owned investment firm Temasek also contributed to the fundraising, which brought Csiro Innovation Fund 1’s total to $167m and $23m above its original target. Main Sequence Ventures is a fund manager set up specifically to manage the Csiro Innovation Fund, established in 2016 by research institute Commonwealth Scientific Research Organisation (Csiro) and the Australian federal government. Csiro committed $21.5m, originating from its royalties on wifi, the wireless networking technology invented by the institute, while the government injected $50.3m. The fund specifically invests in domestic spinouts and SMEs with a particular focus on quantum computing, health, space and agricultural technology. Main Sequence Ventures is led by general partner Bill Bartee, with the team also including partners Mike Zimmerman and Phil Morle. The fund’s nine portfolio companies include Q-Ctrl, a quantum computing spinout of University of Sydney, and agricultural imaging provider FluroSat that also emerged out of Sydney and raised $1.2m in January this year. Zimmerman said: “We are feeling upbeat. We have seen over 1,000 investment opportunities so far and we have backed companies that have raised follow-on rounds and attracted co-investors and they have added about 100 jobs. “We are targeting a portfolio of 25 to 30 companies and we have backed nine companies so far.”

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