Young VC fund Matter Venture Partners closed its inaugural fund at $300 million, marking it one of the largest first funds in 2023. The VC firm invests in the large seed, Series A, and Series B rounds. As per Techcrunch, initially, they raised $200 million while it was a slowdown for startups and VCs to raise investments in 2023.
Focus on hardtech
Matter Venture Partners is committed to taking the “hard” out of HardTech (the application of engineering and science involving the combination of hardware and software to solve a particular problem). It accelerates the process of bringing hardtech innovation to scale.
It builds business models to scale sustainably from day one. It has built strategic LPs – the same companies that enabled the fabless model for semiconductors, the rise of cloud computing, and more to be a diversified manufacturing and technology scaleup supply chain for our startups.
Currently, the VC is solely focused on building the next generation of hardtech startups developing the technologies that matter most, in the world we live in.
Past investments
Kleiner Perkins investors Wen Hsieh and Haomiao Huang started their own VC fund – Matter Venture Partners in 2023 with backing from Kleiner and Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC.
Hsieh was a KPer for 17 years while Huang was there for four years. With a passion for “hard tech,” Hsieh invested in companies LuxVue, a microLED display technology company acquired by Apple; Amprius, a high-energy density lithium-ion battery maker; drone maker DJI; and 3D printing company Desktop Metal. They have co-led investments in Dexterity, a robotics company, and Lumafield, a CT scanning company.
Wen Hsieh, founding partner at Matter Venture Partners, said, “We had gone into it anticipating such difficulty and had very modest expectations. But to our surprise, it went really well for us. We closed $300 million last year, in its entirety, and were significantly oversubscribed.”
He believes that Matter Venture Partners’ focus on hard tech was the reason for the oversubscription. “The world has realised that most if not many of the foundational technologies and trends of our society today are built on hard tech. That really puts wind behind ourselves. We came out successful and unscathed in a very positive way, and we’re very lucky to have raised money at a tough time.”
