Samsung Venture Investment Corporation (SVIC), the corporate venturing unit for most of South Korea-based conglomerate Samsung’s business units, has raised $400m to take its assets under management to $1.2bn.
The move is regarded by insiders as a sign of increasing confidence by Samsung in its corporate venturing unit and achieves its goal of managing more than $1bn earlier than anticipated.
As part of its latest fundraising from Samsung’s business units, which range from electronics to chemicals and heavy industry, SVIC has expanded its team and set aside part of the commitment to take seed-stage deals initially in the US.
SVIC set up its Samsung Venture Europe (SVE) corporate venturing division in 2010 by transferring Michael Jeon from the US team and has just transferred Hyun-Chul Jeong from its strategic planning and research group, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, where he was a technology information officer. The internal move comes as SVE takes on Israel as part of its geographic coverage and is expected to do its first deal in the country this year, insider added.
Insiders said SVIC was also looking to learn from venture capital firms’ experience in creating an entrepreneur-in-residence programme in the US initially and having a set pool of capital to deal seed-stage deals more quickly by cutting down on the authorization process and handing more autonomy to local teams.
Founded in 1999, SVIC has a majority of its team in Korea, including its investment committee, but insiders said about 80% of its deals by value came from the US.
From its website, SVIC invests in semiconductor (36 portfolio companies), telecommunication/IT (24), software (12), internet (four), bio engineering (six) and medical industry/other (eight), film/video industry (one) while potential investment subjects range from start-ups to established companies that are about to be listed in the stock market.