Linear Venture closes $70m China early-stage VC fund

The size of each tranche was not disclosed but the fundraise brings Linear's assets under management to $100 million, according to a release. LPs include an Asia-focused hedge fund, as well as founders and senior executives from various China and foreign internet companies, including Alibaba Group, Tencent Holdings, Baidu, Meituan-Dianping, Qunar, Baixing, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. Some investment professionals also contributed capital to the fund.

Linear Venture, formerly Zhijing Capital (ZJ Capital), was founded in 2012 by Michael Zhang and Harry Wang. Zhang was formerly a vice president at JD.com and a senior director at Alibaba's B2C e-commerce site TMall. Wang was an early employee at Facebook. The firm rebranded as Linear Venture in 2014.

The GP typically invests in seed and pre-Series A rounds in data-driven and artificial intelligence (AI) start-ups. The new fund will continue to focus on these areas, especially data-driven financial technology, looking to deploy between $500,000 and $2 million for each initial investment. Four investments have already been completed, including data analytics player Taodata and cloud computing company Yuan Suan Technology.

Linear was an early investors in companies like peer-to-peer lending platform Dianrong and internet security firm FraudMetrix, both of which have gone on to raise substantial follow-on rounds from other VC investors.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Early-stage
• Venture
• Fundraising
• Technology
• China
• TMT
• Financial Services
• seed
• LPs