Bennett Jones is acting for MaRS Discovery District as it seeks to unlock new value from MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund (MaRS IAF), a seed fund supported by the Ontario government that has made over 175 investments in startups over the past 14 years.
Alongside other institutional and entrepreneurial investors, $25 million of its returns on past MaRS IAF investments will be invested back into Ontario’s VC ecosystem to help launch Graphite IAF IV. The Graphite team has completed a first close of $77 million of the new private sector $100-million venture capital fund.
As the CEO of MaRS, Yung Wu has stated that the purpose of this initiative is to increase the amount of capital available to invest in early stage companies, a component the overall MaRS mission of developing and supporting great Canadian technology businesses.
The Bennett Jones team is led by Jesslyn Maurier and includes Barry Reiter, James Beeby and Phil Ward.