Norwest Venture Partners
Norwest Venture Partners is a 1961-founded, multi-stage venture and growth equity firm that manages about $15.5 billion across consumer, enterprise, and healthcare. Water is not its thesis: as of 2026, (don't) Waste Water tracks a single water-relevant holding, the utility software company SpryPoint, across two deals.
Compiled by Antoine Walter, (don't) Waste Water, from official filings and direct intelligence in Leviathan.
The take
Norwest Venture Partners is one of the oldest venture firms in America, founded in 1961 and backed to this day by a single limited partner, Wells Fargo. It runs as an independent, multi-stage generalist with about $15.5 billion under management, and in 2024 it closed its largest pool ever, the $3 billion NVP XVII, to keep investing across consumer, enterprise, and healthcare.
Norwest has no water fund, no water team, and no water thesis. Water reaches a generalist this size sideways, through a software company whose customers happen to include water utilities, not through any environmental mandate. For a sector used to specialist funds and infrastructure money, a multi-sector firm managing billions is an unusual name to find anywhere near a water deal.
Norwest's single water-relevant holding is SpryPoint, a Canadian company selling cloud-native billing and customer-information software to water, wastewater, electric, and gas utilities. General Partner Ran Ding, who co-heads Norwest's growth equity practice, drove the firm's 2023 investment and joined SpryPoint's board; when Insight Partners came in to lead a follow-on in January 2026, Norwest stayed in. It is the kind of unglamorous utility-modernization software that rarely gets called water tech, but it runs the water bill.
Norwest Venture Partners, for a water founder, is a long-shot cheque: a $15.5 billion generalist that has touched water exactly once, through enterprise software rather than treatment or infrastructure. The open question is whether SpryPoint stays a one-off or the first hint that utility-modernization software becomes a lane the firm comes back to.
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.
Portfolio · 1 water companies
Frequently asked
- What does Norwest Venture Partners invest in?
- Norwest Venture Partners is a multi-stage generalist, not a water specialist. It backs consumer, enterprise, and healthcare companies from early venture through growth equity. The only water-relevant bet (don't) Waste Water tracks is SpryPoint, a utility billing-software company, a single holding across two deals.
- Is Norwest Venture Partners a water investor?
- No. Norwest Venture Partners has no water fund, no water team, and no water thesis. Water shows up incidentally through one holding, SpryPoint, whose cloud software bills customers for water, wastewater, electric, and gas utilities. Norwest invests broadly across consumer, enterprise, and healthcare.
- Who runs Norwest Venture Partners?
- Norwest Venture Partners is led by Senior Managing Partner Jeff Crowe, with a growth equity practice co-headed by General Partners Ran Ding and Sonya Brown. Ran Ding drove the firm's investment in SpryPoint, the one water-relevant company on its books, and sits on SpryPoint's board.
- Where is Norwest Venture Partners based?
- Norwest Venture Partners is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, with a second US office in San Francisco and subsidiaries in India and Israel. Founded in 1961, the firm manages about $15.5 billion and has backed more than 700 companies since inception, with over 230 currently active.
- Is Norwest Venture Partners the same as Norwest Equity Partners?
- No. Norwest Venture Partners is a multi-stage venture and growth firm in Menlo Park, backed solely by Wells Fargo. Norwest Equity Partners is a separate Minneapolis middle-market buyout firm that recently spun out of Wells Fargo as Norwest Capital. They share a name and a 1961 Norwest Corporation root.