The venture capitalists who have long run GGV Capital, a 24-year-old cross-border company that has served as a bridge between the U.S. and China, have since announced they would split its U.S. and Asian operations. After about 6 months, we settled on two new brands.
As first reported by Forbes magazine, veteran investors Jenny Lee and Jixin Fu have just rebranded their Singapore-based business as Granite Asia. Meanwhile, the company's co-founder, Hans Tung, lives in the Bay Area. Published in X Yesterday, it was announced that the US team is now called “Notable Capital.”
GGV Capital announced last fall that it was splitting its team amid rising tensions between the U.S. and China, but never cited atmosphere as an obvious factor in the move.
Sequoia Capital similarly split its operations last year to navigate geopolitical tensions. In Sequoia's case, the U.S. team retained its renowned brand, but Sequoia India & Southeast Asia was rebranded to Peak XV Partners, and Sequoia China was rebranded to Hongshan, which means sequoia in Mandarin.
According to sources familiar with the matter, the thinking behind abandoning the GGV Capital brand was that both teams felt it was best to develop a new brand as they would now operate separately.
Granite Asia is led by Jenny Lee and Jixun Foo from Singapore. Lee is a regular on Forbes' Midas List of top-performing VCs and has made nine IPOs in the past five years, including smartphone giant Xiaomi and software developer King, which went public in 2018. Includes soft WPS.
Mr. Hu, who previously held the title of global managing director of GGV Capital, is credited with helping with deals such as electric car maker Xiaopeng Automobile, which went public in 2020. Ride-hailing giant Didi is reportedly planning to list in Hong Kong this year. Delivery company Grab has seen its share price underperform since it went public through a special purpose acquisition vehicle at the end of 2021 (the company is reportedly in the market with another embattled rival, GoTo Group). It is reported that negotiations had begun as recently as last month for a merger between the two companies.
Granite Asia will focus on startups from China, Japan, South Asia, Australia and Southeast Asia.
Noble Capital says it plans to continue investing in the U.S. as well as Europe and Latin America, and is led by the same investors who have been based in its Menlo Park office for years. Among them is Tung, a Taiwanese-American who has worked with well-known brands such as Airbnb, StockX and Slack. Jeff Richards is behind Coinbase, Bluetooth tracking company Tile, and software developer Handshake. And Glenn Solomon. His deals include his HashiCorp, which provides software to help businesses operate in the cloud (the company is reportedly currently considering a sale). Listed home buying platform Opendoor. and compliance automation startup Drata.
GGV Capital's newest member, Oren Yunger, will also remain on Team Notable. Junger joined GGV in 2018 as an investor and was promoted to managing director last fall.
Another longtime managing director at GGV Capital, Eric Xu, who is based in Shanghai, will continue to oversee the original company's independently managed renminbi-denominated funds.
About two and a half years ago, GGV Capital announced it had raised $2.5 billion for a new fund. This is the largest fund family in history. The investors then split these assets under management along with previously raised capital, with Granite Asia now managing a combined $5 billion, based on GGV Capital's assets under management at the time of the split. Notable Capital has about $4.2 billion remaining. announced.
Pictured above, left to right: Jeff Richards, Eric Xu, Glenn Solomon, Jenny Lee, Jixun Foo, Hans Tung.