CAS Star, a Chinese investment firm that focuses on early-stage hard tech startups, has held the first close of a new RMB-denominated fund, which brings its total assets under management (AUM) above the 10-billion-yuan ($1.4 billion) mark, the firm announced on Tuesday.
The new fund, named ‘Beijing CAS Star Hard Tech Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise Venture Capital Partnership’, will continue the firm’s mission of “exploring ways to commercialise scientific and technological achievements,” said CAS Star in a post on its official WeChat account.
Targeting a final close of 2.5 billion yuan ($342.2 million), the fund looks to support frontier technologies across sectors including new materials, new energy, information technology, and life sciences, with a mantra to focus on deep tech being developed by early-stage, small-scale startups, said the firm.
Government guidance funds, publicly-traded companies, funds-of-funds (FOFs), and private-sector investors committed to the fund as some of the main limited partners (LPs). Among them is the state-owned China SME Development Fund, which is tasked with leveraging government capital to pool at least 100 billion yuan ($13.7 billion) of public- and private-sector financing into small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the country.
CAS Star is led by founding partner Mi Lei, a hard-tech industry veteran and researcher at the Xi’an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Li Hao, another founding partner, is a seasoned early-stage tech investor with expertise in working with government capital operators.
The firm has invested in over 420 hard tech companies to date, including the now publicly-listed semiconductor developer Yuanjie Semiconductor Technology, intelligent logistics solutions provider Wayzim Technology, and smart marketing tech firm Flowing Cloud.
Its investments span industries including semiconductors, artificial intelligence (AI), biotech, aerospace, smart manufacturing, IT, new energy, and new materials.
CAS Star is an investor of Beijing Sinoscience Fullcryo Technology, a large-scale cryogenic equipment producer that in August closed its Series C round at 800 million yuan ($109.5 million). JD Energy, an energy storage solutions provider that counts CAS Star as an angel investor, raised 700 million yuan ($95.8 million) in a Series B round in May.
Although CAS Star did not disclose in its post the size of the first close, the founding partner Mi told news portal 36Kr that the new fund raised 1.165 billion yuan ($159.4 million) in the first close and the final close of 2.5 billion yuan should be achieved by the end of this year.