Japan's Infinity Ventures targets $120m for fourth fund

The firm is currently negotiating a first close for the vehicle, which will follow a similar strategy to previous vintages but with a stronger emphasis on Asia and Greater China, including Taiwan. Fund III, which launched in 2014 and went on to raise $80 million, has been fully deployed. Fund IV will back 25-35 companies at the seed and Series A stages with a focus on international expansion.

LPs are set to include a number of core corporate backers, including Tokyo-listed investment bank Daiwa Securities Group. Corporate LPs in Fund III included human resources specialist Recruit, media and advertising company United, mobile content provider Sammy Networks, games developer Orso, and social networking service Mixi. Fund II raised $71.5 million with support from online services players Gree and Line Corporation.

“We were traditionally more of an industry fund and a lot of our LPs were internet companies, but this time, we’re trying to diversify our LP base to include more institutional investors,” Akio Tanaka, a co-founder and managing partner at Infinity, told AVCJ. “They’ve definitely been looking more at Japan in the last 18 months. I’ve had more meetings with family offices in the last year than the previous five years combined. That’s from the US, China, and the rest of Asia.”

Fund IV will continue Infinity’s strategic focus on media, entertainment, and e-commerce, but will also target artificial intelligence (AI) and financial technology. “AI and fintech are far more technical than the other areas we’ve looked at before, so we’re going to rely on our portfolio CEOs in those segments as part of our due diligence network,” Tanaka added. “In fintech, we’ll be looking for more mature founders, who actually have industry experience and understand the domain.”

Existing portfolio companies include e-commerce marketplace Groupon Japan, online fashion retailer Farfetch Japan, and M17, a Taiwan and Singapore-based media streaming company that raised $35 million last year after snuffing plans for a $60 million IPO in the US. Infinity has also backed Japanese internet-of-things services provider Soracom, which was acquired in 2017 by KDDI Corporation, an LP in at least two of the VC’s earlier funds.

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