World Innovation Lab said Tuesday it has raised over $1 billion.
It's a huge fund for the outfit. The latest funding, which will be used across the firm's multiple funds, brings the firm's assets under management to over $1 billion.
Gen Isayama, the co-founder and CEO of the company, previously worked at DCM in Silicon Valley for about a decade before founding the company. The boom of Asian technology began in China in the early 2000s. He was interested in how innovation came from different countries.
The agenda that Japanese corporations tend to discuss centered on how to digitize the way they work and how to make better use of software technology, according to the founder of the first fund. A lot of government officials and corporations used paper and pen in the past.
They knew they were behind the times when it came to innovation. Japan lost its technology competitiveness after 2000 because it focused too little on software and relied too much on hardware.
In order to address large corporates' pain points, we wanted to bridge Japanese corporations and the venture world. He said that the limited partners were mostly Japanese corporations and that they worked well together.
The company has 22 employees in Palo Alto and 20 in Tokyo. The strategic limited partners are technology experts and advisors in each sector like automotive, airline and consumer electronics.
"typical VCs would hire these experts, but we don't need to do that" I structure this firm to be very different from others.
It's like a win-win-win situation where the LPs and portfolio companies all benefit.
Most of the portfolio is focused on the U.S. and Japan, but the firm is looking at other markets as well.
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Growth and late-stage market in the U.S. and Japan will continue to be the focus for stage of investment. With its newest fund, the outfit plans to focus more on making the world sustainable. Climate tech, energy tech, water technology, envirotech and sustainable technologies will be prioritized. The firm sees pain points in society as a whole.
The companies that went public from the first and second funds were Asana, Mercari, Raksul, and Wise. Auth0 was acquired by Okta. According to the company, it has a total of 15 unicorns in its portfolio, including Aiven, Algolia, Automation Anywhere, DataRobot, Kong, Sendbird, SmartHR, and Unqork.
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Three main funds for direct investment, two strategic partners funds, and two corporate venture capital funds are managed by wiL.
The newest fund's investors include Brother Global, Panasonic, and Japan Investment Corporation, according to the man. The first fund was $360 million and the second fund was $521 million.
KDDI, Osaka Gas, ANA Airline, Suzuki Motor, Nissan Motor and Isetan Mitsukoshi are some of the previous limited partners.
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