Impact Venture Capital
Impact Venture Capital is a Silicon Valley applied-AI venture fund that backs seed-stage startups alongside corporate venture arms. Its water exposure runs through AI and agtech, with two water companies backed since 2016. As of December 2025, Impact merged with CerraCap Ventures to form CerraCap Impact Venture Capital.
Compiled by Antoine Walter, (don't) Waste Water, from official filings and direct intelligence in Leviathan.
The take
Impact Venture Capital is not a water fund, and it has never claimed to be. Jack Crawford launched it across Sacramento and Silicon Valley in January 2016 as an applied-AI seed investor, then brought in Eric Ball, Oracle's former treasurer, and Dixon Doll, who co-founded the venture firm DCM, to help write the cheques. What ties the portfolio together is corporate co-investment: Impact deliberately invests next to the in-house venture arms of corporates like Intel, Applied Materials, and Baidu, so its startups land enterprise customers as well as capital.
Impact Venture Capital reaches water the way it reaches everything, through software. Its two water bets are both data plays: Tova Earth, whose WaterProof platform uses AI to predict facility-level water risk, and GroGuru, which pairs buried soil sensors with irrigation software so growers waste less water on each field. No membrane, no pump, no treatment plant here. This is the digital, agtech end of water, which is exactly where you would expect an applied-AI fund to surface.
As of December 2025, Impact Venture Capital merged with CerraCap Ventures to form CerraCap Impact Venture Capital, a combined platform that reaches across North America, Europe, and India. For a newcomer trying to place this firm, that is the honest headline: the water exposure is real but small, two companies across two deals, and the centre of gravity sits in applied AI and a corporate network, not in the water sector itself. Impact is the kind of generalist I file under watch-for-the-agtech-and-water-data-deals, not among the pure-play water investors I track most closely.
Water Commitment Score
Compiled from official filings, third-party records, and direct intelligence from investors and founders, in Leviathan · recomputed monthly · as of Jun 2026.
How they invest
Portfolio · 2 water companies
Invests alongside
Highlighted = profiled on (don't) Waste Water.
Frequently asked
- What does Impact Venture Capital invest in?
- Impact Venture Capital backs seed-stage technology startups applying artificial intelligence across cybersecurity, robotics, autonomous vehicles, digital health, and data analytics. It co-invests alongside corporate venture arms such as Intel and Baidu. In water, Impact has backed AI and agtech companies that help predict and reduce how much water facilities and farms use.
- How many water companies has Impact Venture Capital backed?
- Impact Venture Capital has backed two water companies across two deals, according to (don't) Waste Water's tracking: Tova Earth, an AI platform that predicts facility water risk, and GroGuru, a soil-moisture and irrigation startup. (don't) Waste Water rates Impact's water commitment Committed as of June 2026.
- Who runs Impact Venture Capital?
- Impact Venture Capital was founded in 2016 by Jack Crawford, who earlier launched Velocity Venture Capital. He co-founded the firm with Eric Ball, the former treasurer of Oracle, and Dixon Doll, co-founder of the venture firm DCM and a past chair of the National Venture Capital Association.
- Where is Impact Venture Capital based?
- Impact Venture Capital is based in Silicon Valley, California, with roots in Sacramento, and invests in seed-stage AI startups across the United States. Founded in 2016, it focuses on co-investing alongside corporate venture groups rather than leading rounds on its own.
- Is Impact Venture Capital the same as CerraCap Impact Venture Capital?
- As of December 2025, Impact Venture Capital merged with CerraCap Ventures to form CerraCap Impact Venture Capital, a single global firm. The water investments tracked here were made under the original Impact Venture Capital, founded in 2016 by Eric Ball, Jack Crawford, and Dixon Doll.