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Chinese VC Glory Ventures closes third RMB fund at $96m, holds USD fund’s first close

Glory Ventures, a Shanghai-based venture capital firm that invests in China and Israel, has hit the final close of its third RMB-denominated fund at 682 million yuan ($96 million) and held the first close of its $100 million second US dollar fund. 


Fundraising for the oversubscribed RMB fund took around one year, Glory Ventures announced in a WeChat post on Tuesday. The firm’s second USD fund reached its first close in April, about half a year after Glory Ventures launched the vehicle. No details of its first close were disclosed.


Glory Ventures manages over 1.5 billion yuan ($211 million) across three RMB funds and two USD funds. It has a portfolio of more than 40 startups. Limited partners (LPs) of the two vehicles include China’s Gaorong Capital, which has backed over 150 startups to date; venture capital firm Morningside Venture Capital; and China-focused early-stage investment companies Lightspeed China Partners and Sky9 Capital, according to the post. CICC Genesis, a fund of funds (FOF) platform of Beijing-based investment bank China International Capital Corporation Limited (CICC); Chinese state-owned VC firm Shanghai STVC Group; Gopher Asset Management, the 170.2 billion yuan ($23.95 billion) asset management unit of New York-listed Noah Holdings; and more than ten IT companies also committed capital to the two funds.


 “Under a macroenvironment of yuan funds’ fundraising ‘winter’ in 2019 and the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Glory Ventures has succeeded in raising new funds and bringing in a diversified range of LPs including mainstream institutional investors and [IT] industry players,” said Glory Ventures managing partners Jerry Bai Zongyi and Yang Guang in a statement. Glory Ventures focuses on the new-generation IT industry and seeks to build a portfolio of startups with high technological barriers and strong commercialisation capabilities, they added. 


Glory Ventures primarily makes investment in China and Israel. In Israel, the company backs customer-proven technology startups synergistic with China’s consumer market, including those in the fields of intelligent hardware, Internet of Things (IoT), AI, and computer vision. In China, the company sources deals in the new-generation IT industry with a focus on data awareness, transmission, storage, computing and application in segments such as intelligent vehicles, consumer electronics, and telecommunication. 


It has backed startups such as Neolix Technologies, a Chinese developer of level 4 autonomous driving vehicles; Chinese vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) solutions firm Vertilite; Israel-based LiDAR provider Innoviz Technologies; and Israeli deep learning chip maker Hailo.