His website, AngelList, allows for a kind of crowdfunding of young startups.
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Headquartered in the USA, Upshot’s fund follows the trend of Chinese investors getting into US companies earlier and earlier.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the fund is “the largest single pool of funds devoted to early-stage startups – ever”. AngelList has used a similar model with a $25 million fund from Maiden Lane.
Naval Ravikant, the founder of AngelList notes that excessive liquidity in the investor space and financial markets generally could lead to a bubble.
When the firm went public in March on the Chinese stock market, it raised nearly $2 billion.
AngelList has, till date, facilitated $205 million in investments across 650 startups including Uber and many other major names, and will expand even further with this fresh funding partnership with CSC Upshot.
According to Ravikant, AngelList will provides data and insights to help CSC make investment decisions. However, it was capped at $400 million to not inflate the seed market. In year one, the firm plans to disperse about $20 million and ramp up to $50 million per year later down the line.
With all this institutional capital from CSC, AngelList will be able to do deals faster, because CSC will be able to participate in any investment syndicate, writing relatively large checks and making the site’s angel-investor leads less reliant on the individuals in their syndicate.
The fund is backed by one of China’s largest private equity firms, China Science & Merchants Investment Management Group, which recently opened up a new venture capital firm, CSC Upshot.
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“$400 million is just the tip of the spear”, added Ravikant. “Unlike a normal venture fund, we never stop”.
