ADVERTISEMENT

Braintree Founder Is Seeking $250 Million for New Venture Fund

Braintree Founder Is Seeking $250 Million for New Venture Fund

(Bloomberg) -- The entrepreneur behind payments service Braintree is seeking to pull together a new $250 million venture fund that will focus on public health, natural resources, and global infrastructure.

The fund, called the OS Fund II, has a big mandate: developing technology that addresses challenges such as preservation of natural resources and curing disease. These types of science-heavy investments are ambitious and often riskier compared to investments that focus on, say, enterprise software.

That doesn't mean it won't make more traditional bets, though. Braintree founder Bryan Johnson launched this fund’s predecessor,  OS Fund I, four years ago after selling Braintree to PayPal for $800 million. One of the biggest successes from the earlier fund was data-storage company Cleversafe Inc., which sold to IBM for more than $1.3 billion in 2015.

OS stands for "operating system," the fundamental software that manages all of a computer's functions.

While Johnson bankrolled OS Fund I himself, OS Fund II will take money from outside investors. The second fund has already made $24.9 million in investments into 12 portfolio companies, including nanotechnology manufacturing company NuMat Technologies and protein-design company Arzeda. 

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.