Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System has named Laura Lenz to head its venture capital unit, making her the fourth person to run OMERS Ventures in just over three years. The appointment signals the pension fund’s intention to keep backing Canadian technology founders even as the unit has gone through repeated leadership turnover.
Lenz joined OMERS Ventures in 2019 and had been overseeing its Canadian investments before her promotion. She takes over from Saar Pikar, who departed in July after roughly a year in the role to lead Kensington Capital Partners Ltd. Pikar had replaced Michael Yang, who left two years after succeeding Damien Steel. Steel exited in 2023 to head climate technology startup Deep Sky Corp.
Before joining OMERS Ventures, Lenz worked as an associate at BMO Capital Markets and later held investor roles at EdgeStone Capital Partners, the MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund and Generation Ventures, a firm led by Geoff Beattie. “We have a fantastic track record in Canada, and I’m excited to continue building,” Lenz said, adding that she is familiar with the portfolio, the people and the strategy.
Michael Block, head of private capital at OMERS, said the organization has “tremendous confidence” in Lenz and her team, describing her as thoughtful about risk and well connected with founders across Canada.
From Early Bets to a Prolonged Slump
OMERS Ventures was established in 2011 when then-chief executive Michael Nobrega brought on John Ruffolo to invest in promising Canadian tech companies, at a time when institutional investors were retreating from venture capital following the 2008-09 credit crisis but the broader startup landscape was emerging around smartphones, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
The unit’s early investments included Shopify Inc., Xanadu Quantum Technologies Ltd. and Hopper Inc., and it later expanded into Britain and the United States while beginning to manage capital from outside investors. Ruffolo left the firm in 2018.
Since then, other Canadian venture investors such as Georgian, Inovia Capital and Radical Ventures have built up billions of dollars in assets, while OMERS Ventures’ prominence in the domestic ecosystem has diminished. A broader downturn in the technology sector beginning in 2021 hit valuations across cloud-software holdings, and OMERS recorded a nine-figure loss this year after TouchBistro Inc., a company OMERS Ventures and OMERS Growth had backed heavily during the 2010s, was acquired by Constellation Software for $100-million.
OMERS Ventures has since stopped making new investments in Europe, narrowing its focus to Canada, and has reduced its staffing. It currently operates with four partners, including Lenz, along with five associates and one principal. The leadership change comes amid a wider review of OMERS’s private-equity business, which has been shifting toward investing through third-party funds and as a co-investment partner with a North American focus. OMERS has also halted new growth-stage investments in more mature technology companies through a separate group.
A Smaller Bet Than Rival Pension Funds
By comparison, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan has built more than $25.9-billion in technology investments through its venture growth arm, TVG, backing companies including Anthropic PBC, Space Explorations Technology Corp. (SpaceX), Databricks Inc. and Harvey AI Corp.
OMERS Ventures, by contrast, has about $2-billion allocated to venture investing, representing roughly 1 per cent of the pension fund’s total assets, and has made four investments in each of the past three years. Its recent backing has included Cohere Inc., Waabi Innovations Inc., Float Financial Solutions Inc. and Dominion Dynamics. Its stake in Xanadu, despite a recent selloff in the stock, remains worth more than US$200-million, a substantial gain relative to the less than US$30-million OMERS originally invested.
Lenz said the fund’s decision to concentrate on Canada has paid off. “It’s where our network is. It’s where our best performing companies are. We have a lot of opportunity here,” she said. She indicated that OMERS Ventures typically invests between $5-million and $15-million per company, with a focus on fast-growing, AI-first businesses led by founders targeting global markets.
Block said OMERS Ventures will maintain “the same direction of travel” under Lenz’s leadership and that the pension fund has no plans to increase the amount of capital allocated to venture investing. He added that the fund remains “open minded” about opportunities as they arise while continuing to concentrate on its current strategy.
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