TEL Venture Capital (TVC), the corporate venturing unit of Japan-based semiconductor and display equipment maker Tokyo Electron (TEL), appointed Keiichi ”Kay” Enjoji, as president in July 2011 and last year promoted him to vice-president of corporate technology strategy.
With strong demand for chips, TEL has been seeing record results while TVC made three new investments in 2017, including Light Polymers and two undisclosed ones.
Enjoji said more would be coming: “Recently we raised our funds to be double, to expand strategic investments.”
Enjoji manages a team of 13 in the US, Japan, France and Israel making strategic investments for TEL to impact its core semiconductor and advanced display, to photonics and optics, sensors, and life sciences, healthcare and medical electronics. TVC has had seven exits out of those 22 deals, while Enjoji is on the boards of Tsukuba-Seiko, ANMS, PML, Opt Creation, Liola, Crystal Solar, SBA, Q14 and an unnamed company.
Enjoji has a wider remit as a head of the innovative technology planning group to manage collaborations with startups. All its investments are expected to lead to joint business development projects.
He was previously a director of TEL’s microelectromechanical systems division, and has worked within the Japanese corporation for more than 25 years. Enjoji received an economics degree from Keio University.