By Muskan Arora
After years of strong oil revenues that allowed the $62B New Mexico State Investment Council to build substantial cash reserves and fixed income allocations, the pension plan is leaning into the potential of venture capital.
The meeting materials disclosed NMSIC’s commitments of up to $245M to its venture capital portfolio, with a goal to outperform the benchmark and invest in businesses operating within the state. To achieve this goal, the pension plan will focus on sectors with local strength and support the development of company “creation engines.” It also plans to target growth-stage investments that build manufacturing capacity in the state.”
The pension plan also expects to make more venture capital investments to support companies scaling manufacturing, facilities, and projects across the state, noted the meeting materials, which also disclosed NMSIC’s focus on growing opportunities in advanced energy, quantum technologies and next-gen compute subsectors.
Venture capital commitments made in June focus on funds — new managers or re-ups — with an expertise in deep tech, climate tech, aerospace and defence; along with two additional New Mexico specific incubators.
The pension plan committed up to $25M to Playground Ventures IV and $10M to Playground Leader Fund II. Playground is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in frontier technology.
Additionally, the pension also committed up to $50M to NM NextGen Compute Fund and $50M to Antler New Mexico, both of which are state-focused incubators.
In the meeting materials, the investment staff noted that Antler NM has quickly achieved product-market fit. “There is significantly higher demand from top quality founders (for incubators) than supply of capital in their fund.”
As well, the plan committed up to $25M to the Root Ventures IV fund, an early-stage investment firm that specializes in deep-technology companies. This marks the first commitment of NMSIC to the firm.
A third commitment was made to DCVC, a deep-tech firm, for $35M. This marks the second commitment to the firm by the pension plan, following the first allocation of up to $50M to DCVC Climate Select, L.P. in March 2024.
Lastly, the pension plan allocated $50M in aggregate to Khosla Ventures Seed G, which backs investments at seed-stage; Khosla Ventures IX, which supports early-stage ventures; and Khosla Ventures Opportunity III, which will focus on later-stage ventures.
As of April 30, 2025, the pension plan had allocated 7.8% to its private equity portfolio.
