According to the Financial Times, the FBI is currently investigating Horn Capital, a nine-year-old Palo Alto, California-based venture backed by Chinese private equity firms, to see whether some of the company's capital came from the Chinese government and whether it shared sensitive startup data with Beijing.
Horn, which was originally founded with $115 million in funding from China's CSC Group, has since acquired stakes in more than 360 U.S. startups, including investment platform AngelList, payments giant Stripe and supersonic flight company Boom.
The survey comes amid ongoing tensions between the U.S. and China, which have seen U.S. companies withdraw from China and both venture funding and startup creation in the country plummet.
The Financial Times noted that Horn has also been at odds with two former executives since 2020. The company sued the former CFO and former Silicon Valley head for fraud. The two countersued, claiming they were deprived of their rightful share of the company's profits. Horn and CSC have denied any wrongdoing.