Battery Sees Opportunities, Preps New Fund–UPDATED

UPDATE: A Battery representative said that the Battery Opportunity Fund is unrelated to the firm’s venture funds. Instead, it is “an ongoing offering, started in 2005 as part of our family office,” according to an email sent by the firm representative. The fund invests on behalf of the firm’s partners and friends and family, the rep said. The fund backs third-party managers, and “does not make direct investments in PE/VC, secondary (or individual companies),” the representative said.

Battery Ventures is seeing opportunities out there, and, they’re probably not unlike a number of other investors that have sprung major new funds into action to capitalize on hot investments.

Battery Opportunity Fund LLC has raised in excess of $170 million, according to a filing with the S.E.C. The filing states the total offering amount remains “indefinite.”

Listed as executive officers in the filing are Battery Ventures founder Rick Frisbie and John O’Connor, who are listed at the firm’s site under “additional investment vehicles” as part of a team assigned to work on “alternative investments to generate above-market returns with a reasonable level of risk.”

Requests for comment put in to Battery were not acknowledged. The VC has made some big-name Internet and tech investments, including in Groupon, Skullcandy and Spot Runner. While it isn’t certain how the VC will put the fund to use, wild speculation would be able to guess that Battery, like a growing number of investors, will put its capital to use buying secondary stakes in private companies. But, of course, that’s just peHUB.com hearsay.