The fund is registered for sale in Luxembourg (domicile), the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Luxembourg, France, Italy (institutional), Spain, Germany and Sweden, and as a restricted scheme in Singapore. In addition, the fund will be registered in the UK, Italy (retail) and Switzerland, subject to regulatory approval.

It focuses on the senior debt tranches (those rated AAA) of US and European CLOs, offering intermediaries and the wealth channel — in addition to institutional investors — access to the CLO market, which has been historically limited to institutional investors. The fund can invest up to 20 per cent of its assets in debt tranches rated AA. Rising investor confidence and appetite for high-quality, yield-enhancing fixed income strategies underscore the structural shift in how investors across EMEA are allocating to CLOs within regulated fund frameworks.

The fund’s performance is benchmarked against the ICE BofA US 3-Month Treasury Bill Index and is managed by PGIM’s Securitized Products team, led by Edwin Wilches, Gabriel Rivera, managing director and co-head of PGIM’s Securitized Products team, and Connor Byrnes, vice president on PGIM’s Securitized Products team.

The fund is classified as an Article 8 fund under the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR). The investment team incorporates analysis of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into its investment process.

Cibus Capital
, a London-based sustainable food and agriculture investment firm advising over $1 billion, has acted as co-lead for a $40 million CAD Series B financing for 4AG Robotics, a pioneer in autonomous mushroom harvesting.

The global mushroom sector – expected to surpass $70 billion by 2030 – continues to face labour shortages. In western markets, labour accounts for over 40 per cent of production costs. 4AG’s system uses AI-powered computer vision, precision suction grippers and advanced motion control 24/7, every day of the year – without manual labour. Designed to retrofit into existing infrastructure, the robots enable consistent quality, improved yield, reduced labour costs and access to real-time operational data for growers, the firm said in a statement.

The new capital aims to help 4AG Robotics expand its manufacturing footprint, grow its field service and customer success teams and accelerate the development of next-gen features such as punnet packing, disease detection and AI-driven yield optimisation.

“Mushroom farming presents an enormous opportunity to utilise robotics and AI to drive labour optimisation together with higher yields and improved quality. The impressive 4AG team has already developed a fleet of robots that pick up to one million mushrooms per week,” Archie Burgess, investment director at Cibus Capital, said.

“This funding helps us leap from a startup proving our product works to a scale-up manufacturer trying to keep pace with demand,” Sean O’Connor, CEO of 4AG Robotics, added. “In just two and a half years, we’ve gone from asking farms to trial our technology to having deposits for over 40 additional robots. As one of the first companies to fully automate the human hand in produce harvesting, we’re ushering in a new era for mushroom farming.”

Alastair Cooper at Cibus Capital, recently highlighted that the need to produce more food using fewer resources to feed a growing population has become critical. “The catalyst is new technology which is offering new solutions around resource efficiency and sustainability. Large-scale farmland needs to revert to more organic and regenerative agriculture and use new tech to make up the slack in terms of production,” Cooper told this news service. See here.

The Series B was led by Cibus Capital and Astanor, with support from new investor Voyager Capital and existing investors InBC, Emmertech, BDC Industrial Innovation Fund, Jim Richardson Family Office and Stray Dog Capital. This round follows 4AG’s $17.5 million round in 2023, bringing total capital raised to over $57.5 million in the past two years.