OMERS Ventures

OMERS Ventures launched in 2011. John Ruffolo and Peter Carrescia co-founded the platform, whose first fund totaled C$180 million. They made its first investment in Canadian company Wave in the middle of that year. Backed by Canadian pension organization OMERS, the platform invests directly in early-stage technology companies.⁠[1]

OMERS Ventures announced the close of Fund II with C$260 million in commitments from investors including OMERS, BMO Financial Group and Cisco Investments. In an interview, its managers said the fund would continue to focus on Canadian technology startups while considering opportunities abroad. BMO and Cisco could also contribute sector expertise to portfolio companies.⁠[2]

DuckDuckGo announced an investment partnership with OMERS Ventures, citing the investor’s expertise and interest in privacy as support for expanding its privacy products globally and its Canadian presence. The announcement did not disclose the investment amount.⁠[3]

After John Ruffolo departed in 2018, Damien Steel took charge of OMERS Ventures and pursued international expansion. In 2019, the firm established offices in Silicon Valley and London, with Michael Yang and Harry Briggs helping lead investment activities in those markets. Laura Lenz and Shawn Chance joined the Canadian partnership.⁠[4]

CrunchbaseCrunchbaseCrunchbase is a private-company data and intelligence platform headquartered in San Francisco. It launched in 2007 as TechCrunch’s startup database, and its own company profile lists Michael Arrington as founder. It passed to AOL with TechCrunch in 2010 and was spun out of AOL/Verizon in 2015 with backing from Emergence Capital, with Jager McConnell as CEO; it has since raised more than $100 million and launched Pro, Enterprise, API and Crunchbase News products. Since 2025 it has focused on using AI to forecast private companies’ funding, growth and exits, delivering its data through MCP, APIs and third-party AI platforms.Open the full entry announced a US$30 million Series C led by OMERS Ventures, with participation from existing investors Emergence CapitalEmergence CapitalEmergence Capital is a US venture capital firm founded in 2003 by Gordon Ritter, Jason Green and Brian Jacobs. It focuses on early-stage enterprise software and cloud services, with investments including Salesforce, Veeva, Zoom and Crunchbase, and has expanded its focus to AI software and services.Open the full entry, Mayfield FundMayfield FundMayfield Fund is a US venture capital firm founded in 1969 by Tommy Davis and Wally Davis and headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Operating under the Mayfield brand, it has backed companies including Atari, Genentech, Lyft, HashiCorp and Crunchbase. Its recent focus includes AI, enterprise software and related infrastructure.Open the full entry, Cowboy Ventures and Verizon Ventures. Crunchbase planned to invest in its products and team, including personalization, search, APIs and broader data coverage.⁠[5][6]

OMERS Ventures launched a US$750 million fund targeting Series A to C companies in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Europe. Fully funded by OMERS, it typically envisaged initial investments of US$5 million to US$25 million, with capacity for follow-on funding. Its areas of interest included insurance, finance, health, property and workplace technology.⁠[7][4]

OMERS Ventures combined its Canadian and US teams and established a unified global investment committee. In interviews, Damien Steel and Michael Yang said the model was intended to assign deals according to sector expertise rather than primarily by geography, and to use teams across regions to support recruitment, customer development and international expansion.⁠[4]

BloombergBloomberg L.P.Bloomberg L.P. is a global financial technology, data and media company founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981. It began by providing terminal services that deliver data, analytics and news to financial professionals, and launched Bloomberg News in 1990. Michael Bloomberg has pledged the vast majority of the company’s profits to his philanthropic organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies.Open the full entry reported that OMERS Ventures had decided to withdraw from Europe and focus on North America. An OMERS spokesperson confirmed the change to the publication, marking a shift from the European expansion begun in 2019.⁠[8]

The OV 3.0 framework identified horizontal business software, vertical industry software, fintech and AI as four main investment areas. The firm typically invested at Series A, B and C, frequently leading or co-leading rounds and taking board seats, while retaining flexibility for small early investments in emerging technologies.⁠[9]

OMERS Ventures announced an investment in Octaura, an electronic trading and data platform for syndicated loans and collateralized loan obligations (CLOs). It cited digitized trading workflows, pricing transparency and network effects among buyers and sellers as reasons for investing, alongside banks and fintech investment firms.⁠[10]

OMERS Ventures appointed Laura Lenz Managing Director and Head of Ventures. The announcement said she had spent seven years at the firm and would prioritize Canadian founders while using OMERS’ global network to help companies scale, with emphasis on AI, defence and technology for physical industries. It reported backing 46 Canadian companies since 2011, including Shopify, Hopper, Jobber, Xanadu, Waabi and Cohere.⁠[11]

OMERS Ventures announced participation in Daedal’s US$4 million pre-seed round. Founded by Henry Gould, Daedal develops diagnostic infrastructure for fusion-energy research, helping reactor developers measure experimental conditions and technical progress. The US$4 million figure refers to the entire round, rather than OMERS Ventures’ individual contribution.⁠[12]

OMERS Ventures is OMERS’ venture capital business. Its website is operated by OMERS Ventures Management Inc. and affiliates. As of November 2026, the contact page lists Toronto and New York offices, while the team page includes Laura Lenz, Henry Gladwyn, Brian Kobus, Eugene Lee and other investors. The website links to LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry, X and Medium accounts, and its tenth-anniversary retrospective also links to an official YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry video.⁠[13][14][15][16][1]