US-based venture capital firm Formation 8 has secured capital from supply chain services provider Flextronics for a $100m fund it is raising to fund early-stage hardware companies, Fortune reported yesterday.
Founded in 2011, Formation 8 invests in both the US and East Asia, harnessing its connections with both to help its portfolio companies grow internationally. It raised $448m for its first fund in 2013 and closed a $500m second fund in December 2014.
The hardware fund will be led by Lior Susan, who joined Formation 8 in January this year, after spending two and a half years at Flextronics, launching the company’s Lab IX hardware accelerator in the process.
In addition to the hardware fund, for which Formation 8 is targeting “upwards of $100m,” the firm is also in the process of raising a seed fund led by partner Drew Oetting, according to Fortune, though no additional details were provided.
Companies in Formation 8’s portfolio currently include predictive analytics provider Context Relevant, mobile e-commerce company Wish and app traffic analysis technology developer Illumio.
Formation 8 has so far benefitted from two exits. Virtual reality technology developer Oculus VR was acquired by social network Facebook in July 2014 for $2bn, which gave Formation 8 a return of “a few thousand percent,” according to the firm’s co-founder Joe Lonsdale.
RelateIQ, the developer of a relationship intelligence platform, was then bought for $390m by enterprise software company Salesforce.com later the same year.