ATLANTA -

Automotive Ventures supports automotive technology entrepreneurs, businesses and investors with industry-specific resources, strategic consulting and extensive connections.

And now the firm has more financial resources to complete those tasks and more.

On Tuesday, Automotive Ventures chief executive officer and founder Steve Greenfield announced the final closing of the firm’s inaugural venture fund, Automotive Ventures Fund I, highlighting greater successes than originally planned.

“Fundraising during a global pandemic had its challenges, but I’m pleased to report that the fund was oversubscribed with more than $7 million in committed capital that we’re eager to deploy into early-stage automotive tech companies,” Greenfield said in a news release.

“Despite only kicking off the fundraise in the latter half of 2020, the motivation to launch a fund has been building for far longer,” he continued. “We’ve witnessed a shortage of institutional capital for early-stage auto tech companies for decades and believe that we are now uniquely positioned to provide these funds, as well as deep automotive expertise and connections, to early-stage entrepreneurs when they need it most.”

Greenfield mentioned that even though Automotive Ventures officially announced the launch of its fund on Tuesday, the company has been actively investing since its first closed in December and named the following companies within its current portfolio:

— Algodriven
— Car Capital
— HopDrive
— RoboTire
— SparkCharge
— WarrCloud

“It’s an interesting time to be in the automotive space, to say the least,” Automotive Ventures senior venture associate Justin Charbonneau said. “We believe the industry is at an inflection point and on the cusp of massive change.

“We are excited and humbled to play a small part to help usher in the next wave of technological innovation in the industry by funding the founders who are building transformational automotive technology companies,” Charbonneau went on to say.

Greenfield touched on another element connected with this week’s announcement while looking forward, too.

“We’re proudly located in Atlanta, Georgia and love meeting founders in our backyard,” he said. “That said, in terms of our investment strategy, we plan to be geographically agnostic and will look at deals worldwide, although we anticipate that most of our investments will be made in U.S.-based companies.”