Targeting data-driven companies, the dual-currency fund brings Linear’s assets under management to US$100 million
With additional reporting by Catherine Xia and Daryl Chung.
The Chinese early-stage investment firm, Linear Venture announced today it has closed a dual-currency investment fund focussed on Seed stage and Series A rounds — bringing Linear’s total assets under management to US$100 million.
While the media release did not reveal the total amount of the fund, Asia Venture Capital Journal reports the total commitments are worth about US$70 million.
The fund was raised in both Chinese RMB and US dollars.
The Limited Partners for the fund include Alibaba Group, Tencent Holdings Limited, Baidu, Dianping.com, Qunar, Baixing.com, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Furthermore, an anonymous ‘top hedge fund’ in Asia participated.
Finally, according to Linear, the VC firm received participation from investment professionals with over ten years of experience in the industry.
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“We will fully pay attention to enterprises that focus on data driven strategies, or have a core focus on intelligence development or, finally, can be applied to business operations,” said Zhang Chuan Michael, one of the Co-founders of Linear, in a statement.
The first investment size will range from US$500,000 to US$2 million. Linear also expressed a commitment to pursue follow up investment with the companies in its portfolio.
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Wang Huai Harry, the other Co-founder, explained the firm’s target companies.
“Linear Venture’s new batch fund will place an emphasis on greater AI — including robotics, AI, big data, IoT, etcetera and data driven fintech companies,” he said.
Examples of companies in the Linear portfolio are Tao Data, a B2B big data company and Seeta, which provides open source face recognition services based on deep learning technologies.
Co-founders Zhang and Wang have quite the background between them. Zhang was part of top management at both JD.com and Tmall while Wang was an early employee at Facebook.
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Disclaimer: Linear Venture is an investor of Optimatic Pte Ltd, parent of e27
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