Linear Capital is a venture capital firm that focuses on investing in frontier technology, productivity, and lifestyle companies with the aim of contributing to a better society.

Linear Capital

We strive to be the best Data Intelligence Technology Fund in China. The general characteristics of the companies we care about are: data-based, AI-driven, and commercially-applicable. As of today, the total valuation of companies invested by Linear Capital has reached approximately US $15 billion. We now have nine funds, of which our USD Fund 5 was successfully raised on Dec 15, 2021. Total AUM is around US$2B. Linear’s investments mainly focus on projects in Data Application, Data Infrastructure and Frontier Technology domains. Linear has invested in over 80 startups, including Horizon Robotics (US$3B), FraudMetrix (>US$1B), Kujiale (>US$1B), Sensors Data, Tezign, Rokid, Guan Data and Agile Robot etc. The valuation of all portfolios has reached around US$20B. Our short term goal is building the best Data Intelligence Technology Fund. For the long term, we aim to become the best Frontier Technology Application Fund.

Linear Capital will host a cocktail event at ICRA Yokohama, Japan next week - join us!

ICRA, the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, is the largest and most influential academic conference in the field of robotics. ICRA 2024 will be held in Yokohama, Japan, from May 13th to May 17th, 2024.
Linear Capital will host a cocktail event near the conference venue with our portfolio companies include Horizon Robotics, Manycore.tech (Coohom Cloud), Agile Robots SE, Franka Robotics, Dessight Biomedical, and Swiss-Mile during ICRA, which Linear Capital's Partner Songyan Huang (黄松延) and Senior Investment Principal Wei Xin (辛未), along with members of Linear Capital's portfolio companies, will attend to discuss and exchange ideas. Researchers and entrepreneurs are welcome to attend as well!

To register, please scan the QR code in the attached PDF which also contains the introduction of the co-hosting portfolio companies. The time and location of the cocktail event will be notified after successful registration. 
Here's the Introduction to the Linear Capital investment team members participating in this event:

Songyan Huang
Partner at Linear Capital, responsible for investments in deep technology. Dr. Huang focuses on investments in the areas of data intelligence reconstruction of supply side, robotics, and chips who has led investments in Agile Robots, AllSense, WeiBuild, and AIGROW among others. Dr. Huang is the reviewer for several top journals of IEEE. Before joining Linear Capital, he worked at Huawei as a data scientist and was in charge of several advanced research and application development projects. Dr. Huang graduated from Zhejiang University with a background in machine learning research, and got an excellent PhD from Zhejiang University.
Dr. Huang was awarded as "36 best investors under age 36" by 36kr twice, "40 best investors under age 40" by CYzone three times, and "Top 20 technology investors" by JazzYear.

Wei Xin
Senior Investment Principal at Linear Capital. Wei focuses on robotics, embodied AI, and various early-stage frontier technologies, having led investments in projects like Swiss-Mile, Dessight Biomedical, and Meta-Photon. Before joining Linear Capital, Wei Xin served as a system chief designer at the CAS Microsatellite Innovation Research Institute, and he received his Bachelor and Master's degrees in Mechatronic Engineering from Harbin Institute of Technology, and an MBA from Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Linear Capital is hiring now! We are looking for investment principals and senior principals based in Europe. Below are the details about the position: 

Job Title: Principal / Senior Principal
Location: Europe. Germany, Switzerland, and the UK are preferred

About Us: Linear Capital was founded in 2014 and has been focusing on investing in the space of "frontier technology + industry", that is, frontier technology represented by data intelligence, next-generation infra, next-generation robot technology, and technological transformations of traditional industries such as biomedicine, materials, energy, etc. Frontier technology is applied to various verticals to significantly improve industry productivity, solve the pain points, complete industry upgrading, and achieve attractive returns by substantially increasing industry value. Linear Capital persists in investing in the early stage and continuing to provide support throughout the investment life cycle.

Job Description: We are seeking investment principal/senior principal in Europe to help us explore investment opportunities in Europe, mainly focusing on frontier technology.

Responsibilities:
1. Exploring investment opportunities in frontier technology in Europe for Linear Capital.
2. Conduct regular market research to stay ahead of industry trends.

Qualifications:
1. Science and engineering background from top universities. Be enthusiastic about early-stage investments.
2. Have strong curiosity and logical thinking ability. Be bold, learn fast, be self-motivated.
3. Excellent research and data analysis skills.
4. Have strong curiosity about frontier technology and be able to dig deeper into frontier technology.
5. Work hard, focus on long-term benefits, and understand long-term returns.
6. Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
7. Dare to make mistakes and learn from mistakes.

Great to Have:
1. Candidates do not necessarily need to have investment experience, but investment experience in technology startups will be a plus.
2. Having prior career background in R&D or PM in top-notch technology companies, or having invested in well-known companies in the related fields will be a plus.
3. A PhD degree in the field of deep tech and science will be a plus. Candidates with educational background in their base country will be a plus.

What We Offer:
1. A competitive compensation package, which includes thoughtfully structured short-term and long-term incentives.
2. An efficient, freely playable, and fully authorized organizational structure.
3. The opportunities to face the best entrepreneurs in the global technology field and top investors worldwide.
4. The position includes Junior Principal and Senior Principal. Compensation will be adjusted to be competitive with the market standard according to the position.

How to Apply: Interested candidates can submit their resume and a cover letter outlining their qualifications and why they are a good fit for the role to: talent@linear.vc

Thanks HKVCA and Tommy Yip for the invitation. It was fun!

Linear Capital's 2023 Review: Moving Forward Amid Challenges

In September 2023, while summarizing our 9th year at Linear Capital, we wrote the following sentence: "The goal is in the distance, the road is still difficult, but there is light in our hearts". It can also summarize 2023 for us.

"Recovery is not yet successful, we still need to work hard." That's my brief word for 2023. In 2022, we made a budget for 2023 and planned to invest $100 million in new projects. However, we ended up in investing around $35 million in approximately 16 new projects. But we believe this contraction is practical and necessary. The main reasons are: 1) We have raised our investment standards; 2) The number of early-stage projects that meet our standards has significantly decreased in the market; 3) The prices of early-stage projects have fallen, and the effectiveness of fund utilization has improved; 4) Follow-on funding has also decreased, and the exit channels are not smooth, making the entire primary market investment chain more tense.

But the challenges of reality do not change our confidence in China's long-term recovery. This is a moment that tests our long-term beliefs the most. I have already elaborated on many long-term perspectives in my year-end summary last year, so I won't repeat them here. As long as we believe in: 1) The competitiveness of the Chinese people (= intelligence * motivation *diligence); 2) The pragmatism of the Chinese government (ultimately the ability to seek truth from facts); 3) Our collective belief that China can become better. The twists and turns of the process do not affect our confidence in China's long-term prospects.

Therefore, overall, we refuse to "Lie Flat" in 2023 and have done many things, such as 16 new investment projects and 26 follow-on invested projects. Regarding exits, in 2023, on the one hand, Linear is exploring suitable exit strategies for portfolio companies, and on the other hand, we are resolutely and strictly implementing exit disciplines to achieve staged and diversified exits. So far, two projects have completely exited, and more than ten projects and asset packages are in the process of exiting or partially exiting. We believe that a large and meaningful exit in technology investment takes a long time and patience, and the premise of a good exit is definitely a good investment. In addition to maintaining high standards in investment requirements, we also hope to prove the value of good investments in both an upward and downward environment through strict execution of exit disciplines and proactive exit strategy management.

We summarize some important events of this year in chronological order (due to the article length and confidentiality of individual invested companies, we only list some new investment projects and follow-on projects in the attached PDF)

We are delighted to share a personnel announcement about Linear Capital:

Jun Yang, former Co-founder and CTO of Dada, has recently joined Linear Capital as a Venture Partner. Jun will assist in deal sourcing, participate in project evaluations, and be an advisor of portfolio companies.

Jun Yang is an experienced technology entrepreneur. He has worked as an engineer and engineer manager at technology companies in Silicon Valley such as Google, Facebook, and Square. In 2015, he joined Dada (which went public in 2020) as a Co-founder and CTO. Jun received his undergraduate and master's degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from Zhejiang University, and later earned his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Linear Capital's founding partner and CEO, Harry Wang, said: "I met Jun 15 years ago when we worked together at Facebook. We had a strong resonance and recognition in terms of engineering concepts and entrepreneurial spirit. I look forward to deep cooperation in the future, to jointly seek the best technology entrepreneurs in China, and wholeheartedly help them grow, making our unique contribution to enhancing productivity in industry upgrading."

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