Monolith Management, a young investment management firm led by ex-partners of Sequoia Capital China and Boyu Capital, announced on Wednesday that its total assets under management (AUM) have reached almost $800 million.
Monolith was established in November 2021 by former Sequoia China partner Cao Xi and Tim Wang, an ex-partner at Boyu Capital where he focused on investments in public equities in the technology, media, and telecom (TMT) field.
The firm’s AUM is approaching $800 million with new capital commitments to its recently launched debut US dollar fund, said Monolith in a post on its WeChat official account.
The firm did not disclose the fundraising target of its maiden USD fund or how much capital it already raised for the new vehicle.
As a venture capital (VC) fund, the new vehicle invests in all kinds of technology-driven business innovations, said Monolith in the post. At present, the fund is actively sourcing deals in areas including the next-generation consumer Internet, advanced technology, as well as ToB (to business) and ToC (to consumer) companies targeting to serve the global market.
The fund looks to provide capital to high-potential entrepreneurs at the early and growth stage of their businesses. It plans to invest somewhere between $2-20 million per cheque in seed to Series A deals, with the capability of underwriting deals at Series B or later funding stages.
Monolith, which deprived its name from a 1968 sci-fi movie called 2001: A Space Odyssey, is one of the few Chinese investment firms to witness a successful USD fundraising at a time when global LPs’ appetite for China-focused USD funds has been rather muted amid a market slowdown and COVID restrictions. China lifted its zero-COVID policy only at the beginning of December 2022, around three years after its implementation.
In China’s private equity market, the number of foreign currency funds set up in 2022 dropped by 40.6% year-on-year to 114, according to statistics from Chinese market researcher Zero2IPO Research. Although the sizeable commitments raised by the top funds boosted the fundraising sum, the aggregate commitments to China-focused funds denominated in foreign currencies still decreased by 18.6% to 249.6 billion yuan ($36.8 billion) from the prior year.
Monolith’s USD VC fund is led by Cao, who co-founded Monolith after his eight-year tenure at Sequoia China where he facilitated the firm’s investments in short video-sharing app Kuaishou, game streaming firm Douyu, and music streaming service Tencent Music Entertainment Group. He also led Sequoia China’s deals in fitness chain Super Monkey, industrial biotech firm Bota Biosciences, and private space launch firm LandSpace Technology.
In addition, Cao helped build Sequoia China Seed Fund, an early-stage fund that takes care of seed and angel-stage investments for Sequoia China. Sequoia China Seed Fund has backed over 300 startups in the fields of technology, healthcare, and consumer since 2018.
With nearly $800 million in total AUM, Monolith’s capital pool also includes the money managed by its first fund, a technology-focused hedge fund for which it had raised over $500 million at its inception in 2021.