Latina-led VC firm Ulu Ventures Secures $208M for Fourth Fund

Latina-led Silicon Valley Venture Capital firm Ulu Ventures has raised $208 million for its fourth fund.

The raise marks a 50% increase from its $138 million Fund III. This latest fundraise doubles Ulu’s assets under management (AUM) to over $400 million.

The fundraising was supported by a long list of institutional limited partners committed to the firm’s strategy of funding diverse tech founders despite the current corporate retreat from DEI efforts.

Ulu Ventures is Supporting Startups With an Unbiased Approach

Ulu was co-founded in 2008 by Miriam Rivera, a Latina and former vice president and deputy general counsel at Google, and her husband Clint Korver, a serial entrepreneur with a Ph.D. in engineering economic systems.

The fund supports seed-stage tech startups in the US using an inclusive, data-based approach that seeks to filter cognitive bias without shutting out any demographic group.

“Ulu is a beacon for the most talented entrepreneurial teams because we reduce bias by applying impartial methods of assessing risk and the same criteria to all people,” CEO, Co-founder, and Managing Director Miriam Rivera.

Ulu Ventures Investment Team: Maria Salamanca, Clint Korver, Miriam Rivera, Steve Reale (Photo: Business Wire)

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Ulu’s approach has resulted in a portfolio that is more diverse than that of typical venture investments. Of the nearly 250 startups the venture firm has backed since 2008, of which ten are unicorns, about 80% have a founder who is an immigrant, a woman, or from a minority group—Ulu’s definition of diverse. Simultaneously, about 80% of its portfolio companies have a white co-founder, and 38% have a female co-founder.

How The Previous Funds Have Performed

Ulu’s earlier funds have performed well. Its Fund I, launched in 2008, had a net total value to paid-in capital ratio of 6.6 times as of the third quarter of 2024, according to Korver. 

That measure shows the total value of a venture fund’s investments, including profits and potential future gains, compared to the initial investment amount. Companies driving returns for that initial fund 1 included fintech SoFi, data analytics company Palantir, and legal tech Everlaw.

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Ulu’s 2016 Fund II stood at 2.1 times Total Value to Paid-In Capital (TVPI) at the same point. Its third fund, raised in 2020, is still too young to have meaningful results yet, Korver said. Nevertheless, the standouts in the second fund were Edutech Guild Education and BetterUp, as well as school bus startup Zum.

Ulu closed Fund IV in October 2024, exceeding the size of its third fund by about 50%. The firm now has over $400 million under management and believes its new fund is the largest in the U.S. venture sphere led by a Latina woman.

Ulu’s Ventures Fund IV’s Supporters

Ulu’s Fund IV was supported by 12 foundations, including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the California Wellness Foundation, and the Marguerite Casey Foundation. 

Fund-of-funds, including GCM Grosvenor, Verdis Investment Management, Fairview Capital, and Illumen Capital, participated, as did the Melinda French Gates family office Pivotal Ventures, university endowments, and other corporate sponsors. 

Getting to this point wasn’t easy. The firm began raising Fund IV in early 2023 but put the process on hold after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. After Ulu restarted fundraising, limited partners gravitated to mega-funds, and the backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts was building. 

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Ulu predicts a company’s success by analyzing key metrics like market share and revenue. They estimate the chances of getting a 10x return on investment. Importantly, they don’t consider factors like a founder’s gender, race, or background when making these predictions. 

Changing DEI Efforts and Programs

Some large tech companies have been cutting back their DEI efforts with the Trump administration’s bent. Google, for instance, eliminated its goals of hiring people from underrepresented groups, The Wall Street Journal reported, saying some of its DEI programs may “raise risk, or aren’t as impactful as we’d hoped.” Some recently published research also undermined earlier findings that executive diversity boosts profits.

Meanwhile, the number of deals raised by Black founders has been declining since 2021, with just 128 rounds for $734 million raised last year, according to Crunchbase, a fraction of the nearly $179 billion raised by U.S. startups in 2024.

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“If you are going to be standing strong on DEI today, you have to be incredibly buttoned-up,” said Maria Salamanca, a partner at Ulu Ventures, referring to the rigor aimed for in Ulu’s data-driven process.

The venture ecosystem has changed in the past year, with several legal setbacks to corporate diversity programs. “We want to be an example of how to do it thoughtfully, we don’t want to be a target,” Salamanca said of its efforts to be more inclusive.

Main image: Miriam Rivera,