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The Westly Group is a Venture Capital fund
The Westly Group is a prominent venture capital firm investing in companies that drive digitization and sustainability across critical sectors. The firm cultivates a portfolio focused on energy, mobility, industrial technology, buildings, and cybersecurity, identifying and backing early to growth-stage enterprises poised for significant impact. Their strategic approach centers on nurturing innovative solutions that address complex challenges within these large, evolving industries.
The firm was established in 2007 by Steve Westly, whose vision centered on the profound opportunities arising from the intersection of technology and sustainability. Westly, a former California State Controller, leveraged his extensive experience in both public service and the private sector to identify the nascent companies that would reshape traditional markets. This foundational insight underpinned the firm’s strategy to support ventures capable of transforming global infrastructure and resource management.
The Westly Group primarily serves entrepreneurial companies seeking capital and strategic guidance to scale their transformative technologies. The firm’s mission is to accelerate the development of technologies that enhance efficiency, reduce environmental impact, and modernize foundational industries. They are committed to fostering a future where technological innovation directly contributes to a more sustainable and digitized global economy.
Key people at The Westly Group.
The Westly Group is a premier venture capital firm that has established itself as a leading investor in the transformation of foundational industries.[1][3] Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the firm manages over $800 million in assets under management across five funds.[3][7] The firm's mission centers on partnering with exceptional entrepreneurs who are digitizing and decarbonizing the world's largest industries—those that comprise more than 50 percent of global GDP.
The Westly Group's investment philosophy emphasizes right-sized funding tailored to entrepreneur needs rather than deployment-driven capital allocation.[3] The firm invests across seed, Series A, B, and C rounds with check sizes ranging from $500,000 to $15 million, maintaining flexibility to adapt to specific company requirements.[3] This approach reflects a conviction that startups should raise capital aligned with their growth stage and commercialization needs, not the capital deployment mandates of larger venture funds. The firm's core sectors include energy, mobility, buildings, industrial technology, and cybersecurity—industries undergoing profound technological and sustainability-driven transformation.[1][3] Through its network of 30 of the world's largest energy, mobility, and industrial companies as investors, The Westly Group bridges the gap between venture-backed startups and established corporate partners, creating unique pathways for portfolio company growth and market adoption.[1]
Steve Westly founded The Westly Group in 2007 with a deliberate focus on investing in entrepreneurs transforming the world's largest industries.[3][7] The firm's genesis came at a pivotal moment in venture capital history—just as the clean energy and sustainability movements were gaining momentum, yet before most traditional venture firms had developed deep expertise in these sectors.
The firm's early track record established its credibility in this space. In 2008, just one year after founding, The Westly Group invested in Tesla when the company was a 29-person team under Elon Musk's leadership, backing the vision to create the first mass-market electric vehicle.[6] This early bet on Tesla proved transformative, not just for the firm's returns but for validating the thesis that foundational industries were ripe for venture-scale disruption. Subsequent landmark investments followed: the Series A round of SentinelOne in 2014, backing Tomer Weingarten's vision for endpoint cybersecurity, and a partnership with Austin Russell and Luminar in 2017 to develop automotive-grade LiDAR for autonomous vehicles.[6] These investments demonstrate how the firm evolved from an early-stage focused investor into a multi-stage operator capable of supporting companies through critical inflection points.
The Westly Group has developed unparalleled depth in foundational industries—energy, mobility, buildings, and industrial technology—rather than chasing broad technology trends. This specialization allows the firm to provide sector-specific guidance that generalist venture firms cannot match. The firm's portfolio includes 118 investments with 20 portfolio exits and 9 funds, demonstrating sustained success in these verticals.[5]
A defining strength is the firm's network of 30 of the world's largest energy, mobility, and industrial companies as investors and strategic partners.[1] This corporate ecosystem provides portfolio companies with customer access, distribution channels, and validation that accelerates commercialization. Rather than relying solely on venture capital returns, the firm's corporate partners benefit from early exposure to disruptive technologies, creating aligned incentives across the investment thesis.
Unlike mega-funds constrained by deployment requirements, The Westly Group maintains nimble check sizes and investment structures.[3] This flexibility enables the firm to support companies at critical inflection points without forcing unnecessary capital raises. The firm's philosophy explicitly rejects the notion that larger funding rounds are inherently better, instead tailoring capital to company needs—a contrarian stance in venture capital.
The firm's portfolio includes Tesla, SentinelOne, Luminar, and Procore—companies that have achieved significant scale and market impact.[1] With 9 IPOs among its exits, The Westly Group has demonstrated the ability to identify and support companies that achieve public market success, validating its investment thesis and operational support capabilities.[3]
The firm has deliberately avoided reliance on government incentives like the Inflation Reduction Act, instead focusing on companies with sustainable business models independent of policy shifts.[5] This approach insulates portfolio companies from political risk and ensures that investments are grounded in fundamental market dynamics rather than temporary subsidies.
The Westly Group operates at the intersection of three powerful macro trends: the energy transition, the digitization of industrial sectors, and the rise of sustainability as a core business imperative. The firm's timing has proven prescient—it entered the venture capital space just as venture investors were beginning to recognize that the largest economic opportunities lay not in consumer internet or software-as-a-service, but in the physical transformation of energy, transportation, and industrial systems.
The firm's influence extends beyond capital deployment. By legitimizing venture capital investment in foundational industries, The Westly Group helped shift venture capital's center of gravity away from pure software plays toward hardware, infrastructure, and industrial technology. This shift has cascading effects: it attracts top engineering talent to climate and energy startups, it encourages corporate innovation partnerships, and it validates the venture model for solving humanity's most pressing infrastructure challenges.
The firm's corporate partnership model also represents a broader ecosystem evolution. Rather than viewing corporate investors as competitors or threats, The Westly Group has structured its fund to align corporate and venture interests. This model has become increasingly influential as large industrial companies recognize that venture-backed startups often move faster than internal R&D teams in developing breakthrough technologies.
The Westly Group stands at an inflection point in venture capital history. The firm's early bets on energy and industrial transformation have proven prescient, and the macro tailwinds—decarbonization, electrification, industrial automation, and cybersecurity—show no signs of abating. Steve Westly has noted that 90 percent of new energy added in the US last year was renewable, underscoring how rapidly the economy is moving toward sustainability.[5]
Looking forward, The Westly Group's influence will likely expand as three dynamics converge: first, the continued maturation of climate and energy venture capital as a distinct asset class; second, the increasing urgency of industrial decarbonization driving corporate capital toward venture-backed solutions; and third, the firm's demonstrated ability to support companies through multiple funding rounds and toward exit.
The firm's future will be shaped by its ability to maintain its specialized focus while scaling capital deployment. With over $800 million under management and a track record of supporting companies to significant scale, The Westly Group has positioned itself not just as a venture capital firm, but as a critical bridge between the startup ecosystem and the world's largest industries. In an era where venture capital increasingly focuses on solving existential challenges rather than consumer convenience, The Westly Group's thesis—that the largest opportunities lie in transforming foundational industries—has moved from contrarian to mainstream. The firm's next chapter will likely involve deepening its impact in these sectors while potentially expanding its capital base to support the scale of transformation required to address global energy and industrial challenges.
Key people at The Westly Group.
