Fusion Fund Launches $85 Million Early-Stage VC Fund Backing Entrepreneurs Commercializing Technically Differentiated Businesses
Previously known as NewGen Capital, Fusion Fund’s latest fundraise will build upon the firm’s momentum in key technical-driven areas of innovation
Earlier this month we closed an $85 million fund. This new fund represents the institutionalization of the firm, emphasizing its continued focus on technical-driven areas of innovation and founders that are dedicated to solving real world problems through technological breakthroughs. The fund is backed by institutions LPs, family offices, and high net worth individuals, with a majority of the previous fund’s limited partners re-committing to this fund. The fund has attracted great interest and was oversubscribed, exceeding its initial target of $75 million.
Focusing on seed stage investments, we aim to discover and back companies driving the next wave of technological innovation, which the firm identifies as: The Connected Industry (robotics, mobility, Internet of Things); Network Infrastructure (connectivity, security); Artificial Intelligence (computer vision, natural language processing, proprietary data generation); and Health and Medical Technologies (medical devices and diagnostics). In addition, in specific scenarios, the fund may opportunistically invest in pre-seed and Series A companies in which the firm has high conviction in the founding team. The firm looks at innovative companies in major tech hubs throughout the US, with over 40% of its existing investments based outside of the greater San Francisco Bay Area.
In 2015, our Founding and Managing Partner, Lu Zhang started NewGen Capital. The fund’s vehicle backed 36 seed stage companies over a two year period, with already over half of them successfully raising subsequent rounds of financing. Disclosed investments include TVision Insights, Stratifyd, Paperspace, MissionBio and Paradromics. The firm invests in companies that utilize technical differentiation to obtain unfair business advantages and fast-follower defensibility. Our rebranding from NewGen Capital to Fusion Fund is designed to better reflect the firm’s entrepreneurial and investment experience and focus on backing technical-driven entrepreneurs.
Our management team includes Founding and Managing Partner, Lu Zhang, and Partner, Homan Yuen, two experienced investors and entrepreneurs with strong academic backgrounds in technical fields. Both partners have direct experience operating, growing, and exiting technical startups, which has proven invaluable in providing true experiential wisdom and insight for the firm’s investors and portfolio company founders. This in-depth technical expertise and training allows our team to evaluate complex and emerging technologies at an early stage, and assist portfolio companies in navigating through each stage of the startup life cycle as a trusted partner. As investors we aim to provide significant value-add contributions to their investments through talent recruitment, fundraising support, business strategy, and international expansion.
Building upon our first fund’s momentum, we are well positioned to create significant value for our investors and founders. We will continue to support great founders by providing smart capital and strategic counsel, and believe our strong focus on technical and healthcare investments will allow us to clearly position ourselves as an emerging leader in this space. We are excited and thankful of the support we have received from our investors to identify and back exceptional business-minded technical founders. The rapid pace of technical innovation and convergence is generating a new wave of entrepreneurial businesses, which are demonstrating great potential to positively disrupt and create new industries.
To date, our new fund has backed companies such as Catalia Health, Neuvector, Sonavex, and IAM Robotics.
-About Fusion Fund-
Fusion Fund has invested in over 40 companies and has over $100M in assets under management. For more information, please visit https://www.fusionfund.com/ and or check out our recent article on TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/02/fusion-fund-raises-a-second-85m-fund-for-heavily-technical-investing/.
