The Portland financial tech firm WEX is launching a venture capital arm to invest up to $100 million in early stage companies.
WEX President and CEO Melissa Smith says this is a natural next step for the company that started out by providing fuel cards for fleets of vehicles 40 years ago. And she says the investments by WEX Venture Capital will be quite targeted.
"Companies that are in areas like fleet electrification, the electric vehicle charging ecosystem, energy management and optimization," Smith says. "Some of things that are adjacent to this energy transition that we think will be helpful to our customer set."
WEX Venture Capital has already made investments in companies focused on electric vehicle charging software, trip planning, and range prediction.
