Walden Catalyst Ventures, the US-based venture capital firm co-founded by ex-employees of South Korea-headquartered consumer electronics producer Samsung’s Catalyst Fund, closed its debut fund at over $550m yesterday.
The limited partners were not disclosed but the firm said they included institutional investors as well as the chief executives of top tech companies.
Young Sohn, one of Walden Catalyst Ventures’ two founding managing partners, was formerly chief strategy officer of Samsung Electronics and ranked fourth on Global Corporate Ventures’ 2019 Powerlist.
The firm’s founding team also includes partners Shankar Chandran and Francis Ho, both alumni of Samsung’s Catalyst Fund who left the unit earlier this year to join. It is targeting companies with business models that rely on artificial intelligence and big data.
The first three deals to be revealed by Walden Catalyst Ventures include a $20m investment in language modelling technology developer AI21 Labs and a $3.6m contribution which took machine learning startup MindsDB’s seed round to $7.6m.
Walden Catalyst Ventures had already co-led analytics processing technology developer Speedata’s $55m series A round, which was disclosed in September this year.
