San Diego is ranked the #7 city in the United States for venture capital investment activity. San Diego startups attract over $4 billion in venture capital funding annually. Several notable startup unicorns were founded in San Diego, such as Qualcomm and Illumina.
As part of our going series of free fundraising resources and investor lists for founders, this article explores the top 15 active VC firms and investors based in San Diego, including details regarding their fund size and history:
1. Correlation Ventures
Correlation Ventures is a new breed of venture capital firm, leveraging world-class AI to offer entrepreneurs and other venture capitalists a dramatically better option when they are seeking additional capital to complete a financing round. We’re founders, VCs, and Data scientists who have founded and funded hundreds of companies of all shapes and sizes. We pride ourselves on being the industry’s most entrepreneur-friendly firm, including making decisions within days. We have a world-leading analytics and data team, and the world’s most complete VC data set, so neither we nor our portfolio companies are ever flying blind. We’re one of the most active early-stage VC investors in the US. What do we invest in? Great companies. Let’s connect.
- Founded: 2006
- Fund Size: $365M
- Website: correlationvc.com
2. Domain Associates
Founded in 1985, Domain Associates, L.L.C. is a venture capital firm with an exclusive focus on life sciences. With $2 billion of capital under management, Domain is headquartered in Princeton, NJ with a second office in San Diego, CA. Domain’s three major investment segments are pharmaceuticals, specialty pharmaceuticals, and medical devices, while additional areas of interest include biomaterials, bioinstrumentation, and diagnostics. The Partners of Domain have a total of close to 200 person-years of experience among them in the healthcare/venture capital industries and have been involved in the formation and growth of more than 200 life-sciences companies. The highly focused network, experience, and reputation of this team have made it one of the top private-equity groups participating in the healthcare field.
- Founded: 1985
- Fund Size: $1.2B
- Website: domainvc.com
3. Mission Ventures
Mission Ventures is a venture capital firm specializing in seed and early stage investments in emerging markets in software and information technology companies. It also makes growth capital investments. It does not consider investments in healthcare sector. The firm makes investments in communications, enterprise applications, infrastructure, and technology-driven services. It targets investments in entrepreneurial companies located in Southern California. The company can provide additional funds for follow-on financings and can partner with other venture capital firms. Mission Ventures was founded by Douglas F. Wall in 1996 and is headquartered in San Diego, California.
- Founded: 1996
- Fund Size: $12M
- Website: missionventures.com
4. Section 32
S32 is a venture capital firm investing at the frontiers of technology. Founded by Bill Maris, the team has vast experience building iconic companies. Our goal is to accelerate the discovery, development, and distribution of revolutionary technologies that improve the human condition. We invest across the entirety of technology. This includes artificial intelligence, enterprise software, cybersecurity, fintech, quantum computing, computational biology, and biotechnology. Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/S32_VC
- Founded: 2017
- Fund Size: $1.1B
- Website: section32.com
5. Finistere Ventures
Finistere Ventures is an agricultural technology and life sciences venture capital investor. Founded in 2005, the company partners with other entrepreneurs and creative thinkers to build innovative companies that have the potential to transform modern agriculture, increase food security, improve nutrition, and enhance sustainability. Their appliedexperience as operators, and pioneering role in Ag Tech, is actively utilized to benefit its portfolio companies and Partners. Finistere has global access to the best new technologies from centers of Ag Tech excellence in the U.S., Australia, Israel, New Zealand, and Canada through its venture partner networks. Finistere’s locations in San Diego and Palo Alto, California keeps them connected to the centers of mainstream venture investment and the world’s leading innovation ecosystem
- Founded: 2005
- Fund Size: $247.8M
- Website: finistere.com
6. Keshif Ventures
Keshif Ventures, LLC is a private Angel Investing company that invests in early stage companies primarily in the High Tech sector, and generally in the San Diego, CA area. Keshif Ventures, LLC strives to invest in companies with strong teams and innovative or disruptive ideas – or ideas that aim to help “”the greater good””​.
- Founded: 2012
- Fund Size: $8M
- Website: keshif.com
7. Spark Growth Ventures
Recognized as a 2022 Emerging 50 VC and 2023 Top 25 Founder’s Choice VC, Spark Growth Ventures is a community oriented, early & mid stage, vertical-agnostic, technology venture capital firm. Our mission is to support gritty and exceptional founders in their missions by bringing forth the combined value of our strong community. We are fortunate to have a global network of entrepreneurs, C-level relationships, subject matter experts, world-class talent, institutional investors, high net worth individuals and family offices, many of who are investors in our platform. Our team has several decades of global experience in venture capital, entrepreneurship, innovation, executive & board management, functional leadership and advisory work. We create 360° long-term value for our startups and our investors through active participation alongside our founders, leveraging our extensive experiences and global networks. We work in the trenches with our portfolio on top-line growth, bottom-line expansion and capital optimization. Our partnership areas span all commercial aspects such as sales & go-to-market, operations, corporate functions, fund-raising and organizational effectiveness as well as exit planning and execution.We respect authenticity, intellectual curiosity, collaboration, optimism, grit and boldness. We prioritize efficiency and transparency in our work. We believe in integrity and doing business with the goal of creating a win-win for all stakeholders, not just the shareholders.
- Founded: 2018
- Website: sparkgv.com
8. ClearVision Equity Partners
ClearVision Equity is a Venture Capital firm that provides flexible growth capital and sophisticated resources to small growing companies. ClearVision Equity was founded by successful San Diego serial entrepreneur and investor Mitch Patridge. With a thesis that small underserved markets have attractive qualities for capital investments with rich talent pools and thriving entrepreneurs, ClearVision made its first investment in 2017. Since inception, ClearVision Equity has completed 30+ investments across industries and categories including healthcare, financial services, agriculture, food and beverage, video games, education technology, artificial intelligence, hospitality, behavioral health, telemedicine, secondary financial markets, marketing, and more.
- Founded: 2017
- Fund Size: $19M
- Website: clearvisionequity.com
9. BioMed Ventures
BioMed Ventures is the famous VC, which was founded in 2010. The main department of described VC is located in the San Diego. The company was established in North America in United States. The standard case for the fund is to invest in rounds with 5-6 partakers. Despite the BioMed Ventures, startups are often financed by Valley Ventures, Solstice Capital, Clarus Ventures. The meaningful sponsors for the fund in investment in the same round are New Enterprise Associates, Sofinnova Investments, Solas BioVentures. In the next rounds fund is usually obtained by Solas BioVentures, Sofinnova Investments, Silicon Valley Bank.
- Founded: 2010
- Fund Size: $9M
- Website: biomedvc.com
10. Radicle Growth
Radicle carefully selects innovative ag and food tech start-ups for investment, ensuring that powerful, disruptive technologies reach their full potential. We provide a company building platform, a fertile environment for visionaries in the ag space, not just to grow but to flourish. Their proprietary platform is the only one of its kind in the agriculture industry, thus filling a huge void in the market by identifying the most innovative technologies and accelerating them with a range of value-creation initiatives. Radicle Growth pioneered a concept called The Radicle Challenge to proactively seek out the best and brightest entrepreneurs solving a problem or looking to disrupt an existing business model in the ag and food industries.
- Founded: 2016
- Fund Size: $5M
- Website: radicle.vc
Raising funding for your startup? Create the perfect pitch deck:
Are you interested in learning how to write and design a winning pitch deck for your startup? You may be interested in our Turnkey Pitch Deck template — created by experts who have raised millions themselves, and helped hundreds of startups collectively raise billions form top investors. If not, you’ll probably at least want to read through our comprehensive guide to the perfect pitch deck.
