Adriel Chua has joined Chinese ecommerce group Alibaba Group as a Singapore-based investment manager to oversee Southeast Asia and Latin America investments.
Chua had spent five years and eight months at Singaporean venture capital firm East Ventures, most recently as a senior investment associate. He was involved with investments in startups such as edtech developer Ruangguru, logistics platform Waresix and Sendo, which provides ecommerce services.
Before that, Chua held an investment analyst role at US-headquartered VC firm Amasia, where he was involved in the fundraising rounds for enterprise software developer Dialpad and consumer subscription service The Atheltic.
New York-listed Alibaba runs several corporate venture capital arms including artificial intelligence-focused Alibaba Innovation Venture and Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund, which co-runs with VC group Gobi Partners a HK$1bn ($130m) fund for Hong Kong and a NT$10bn ($310m) fund for Taiwanese startups.
GCV Emerging Leaders Awards 2020
Chibo Tang, managing partner, Gobi Partners
Alibaba began focusing on AI technology startups last year, with its Alibaba Cloud subsidiary backing Zhipu Huazhang Technology, 01.AI and Baichuan through cloud credits.
Last month, Alibaba took part in Moonshot AI’s $300m round, investing alongside internet technology firm Tencent, five months after the corporate led MiniMax’s $600m series B.
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Toby Xu, chief financial officer, Alibaba
