DCVC

About

DCVC (formerly Data Collective) is a deep technology venture capital firm founded in 2011 by Matt Ocko and Zachary Bogue ¹². The firm is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with a second office in San Francisco ².

DCVC manages approximately $4 billion in assets under management across 13 funds, including six flagship funds, dedicated bio funds, and a climate fund ²³. The firm employs approximately 45 team members ². DCVC partners have backgrounds with “unusually high concentrations” in hard-science and national-security domains, including intelligence, cybersecurity, and government systems, and the firm has more published scientists than MBAs on staff ²³.

The firm’s fifth flagship fund, DCVC V, closed at $725 million in September 2019, oversubscribed by 25% from an initial $575 million target ⁴. Limited partners include university endowments, global charities, global insurance funds, and pension funds ⁴. In 2018, DCVC launched DCVC Bio as a dedicated life sciences division co-founded by Dr. John Hamer, Dr. Kiersten Stead, Matt Ocko, and Zachary Bogue, which closed its third fund at $400 million in 2024 ²⁵. DCVC also launched a climate-focused fund in 2022, raising over $700 million across the bio and climate funds combined ⁵.

The firm’s name originated from its founding thesis around big data and computation. As Ocko has explained, when they started, “one of the hard real-world problems was the scale-out compute problem when everyone’s databases were breaking and big data was largely unknown, leading them to put it in the company name ‘Data Collective’” ⁶.

The portfolio includes 26 unicorns, 18 IPOs, and 115 acquisitions as of January 2026 ³. Notable portfolio outcomes include SentinelOne (IPO, DCVC led the seed in 2013 and participated in every round through Series E), Planet (IPO on NYSE in 2021), and investments in Databricks, Elastic, and Rocket Lab ³⁷⁸.

Stated Thesis

DCVC publicly describes its mission as backing “entrepreneurs solving trillion-dollar problems to multiply the benefits of capitalism for everyone while reducing its costs” ². The firm states it steers “away from the frothy, the faddish, and the fashionable” to invest in deep tech companies with “computationally accelerated ways to solve the hardest, most urgent science and engineering problems” ⁹.

Managing Partner Matt Ocko has described DCVC’s meta-thesis as focusing on “the use of compute and novel, highly defensible algorithms” with capital efficiency as a key aspect ⁶. The firm defines deep tech as backing entrepreneurs who use applied AI to address hard problems in sectors including agriculture, mining, manufacturing, health, and defense ⁶.

The firm emphasizes it is “most explicitly not a double bottom line fund,” with Ocko stating: “We are here to drive returns for our LPs” ⁶.

Inferred Thesis

Based on the portfolio companies listed on DCVC’s website across 10 sector categories ⁸, the following patterns emerge. The website lists approximately 200 portfolio companies.

Sector distribution (approximate, from website categories; companies may appear in multiple categories): - TechBio/Computational bio & chemistry: ~44 companies — the single largest category, including AbCellera, Atomwise, Ginkgo Bioworks, Freenome, Chai Discovery - Industrial transformation/Robotics: ~27 companies — Agility Robotics, DroneDeploy, Lumafield, Pyka, Fulfil - Enterprise enablement: ~16 companies — Airtable, Databricks, Elastic, Honeycomb.io, CircleCI, SingleStore - Climate: ~21 companies — Fervo Energy, Oklo, Twelve, Pivot Bio, Mainspring Energy, Brimstone - Cybersecurity/Defense: ~11 companies — SentinelOne, Illumio, Epirus, Fortem Technologies, Reality Defender - Finance & Insurance: ~10 companies — Checkr, Flutterwave, Feedzai, Signifyd, Tala - Foundational technology (quantum, chips): ~10 companies — Atom Computing, Rigetti Computing, Graphcore, StarkWare - Space: 5 companies — Planet, Rocket Lab, Capella Space, Impulse Space, Akash Systems - TechMed/Healthcare: ~19 companies — Carbon Health, Curative, Freenome, Karius, Enlitic

Stage distribution: DCVC primarily invests at Seed and Series A, with typical check sizes of $5M-$25M ¹⁰.

Geographic focus: Primarily U.S.-based companies, with some investments in Africa (notably Flutterwave and Tala) ⁸¹⁰.

Notable patterns: - The bio/life sciences vertical is the largest single focus area, consistent with the launch of a dedicated DCVC Bio fund structure ²⁵. - Climate technology is a major and growing focus, with a dedicated fund ⁵. - The firm’s emphasis on “computational approaches” means even its bio and climate investments are typically AI/ML-enabled rather than purely traditional. - Defense and space investments are present but represent a smaller portion compared to firms like Lux Capital.

Portfolio

This table represents approximately 12% of DCVC’s estimated 200+ portfolio companies ². Years are approximate based on available data.

In Their Own Words

“You can have prosperity and resilience — and you don’t have to be a caricature of a nineteenth-century robber baron to do it.” — Matt Ocko, Co-Founder and Managing Partner ⁹

“We are here to drive returns for our LPs.” — Matt Ocko, on DCVC not being a double-bottom-line fund ⁶

“With DCVC, we back entrepreneurs solving trillion-dollar problems computationally. And five or ten years from now, I hope we’re still doing that and at an even greater scale.” — Zachary Bogue, Co-Founder and Managing Partner ⁶

“Pretty much everything in advanced manufacturing also falls into the bucket of decarbonization.” — Milo Werner, General Partner ⁹

What Founders Say

“More than just money, DCVC’s seed investment accelerated Twelve’s detailed techno-economic analysis while validating key aspects of our business model, something we wouldn’t have been able to achieve as quickly alone.” — Dr. Etosha Cave, Co-Founder and CSO of Twelve ¹³

Sources