A quick peek inside Fontinalis, one of Detroit’s best-known young venture firms
Fontinalis, the 12-year-old, Detroit-based early stage venture firm, is known for being among the very first investing outfits to focus squarely on mobility as an overarching theme. It wasn’t a surprising mandate, given that the outfit’s cofounders include Bill Ford, the great grandson of Henry Ford and the executive chairman of Ford Motor Company.
Nevertheless, the firm has used its ties to the traditional automotive industry to effectively compete against, and invest alongside, many Silicon Valley venture firms in the intervening years, creating an interesting portfolio along the way. It had stakes in Postmates, acquired in an all-stock deal by Uber, and in Lyft, for example. It also backed the self-driving startup nuTonomy, which sold to auto supplier Delphi Automotive in 2017 for $450 million. Some of its newer bets include Gatik, a startup developing an autonomous vehicle stack for B2B short-haul logistics; Robust.AI, a startup at work on an industrial-grade cognitive platform for robots; and Helm.ai, a maker of driverless car AI.