China’s Fudan University has launched a US dollar fund to pool $100 million for investments in scientific research projects grown out of the university, and in the industrialisation and global forays of innovative startups.
Fudan, a public university located in Shanghai, introduced the ‘Fudan Science and Technology Innovation Overseas Investment Fund (复旦科创海外投资基金)” to back early-stage startups from their angel financing to Series Pre-A and Series A funding rounds.
The new fund launch marks another step forward by a top Chinese university in expanding its capital pool for venture financing in startups developing cutting-edge technologies from university research labs and scientific projects. Fudan has joined peers like Tsinghua University, Peking University, Hong Kong University (HKU), and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) to become a new force in transforming early-stage tech startups into more established businesses.
With the USD overseas fund, Fudan plans to closely track tech achievements originating from Fudan’s labs and core scientific research institutions, aiming to fuel their early-stage growth and commercialisation, said Fudan in an announcement.
The fund’s mandate includes supporting and attracting to China global companies and overseas-based talent with an interest in the country’s growth potential, said the university. It targets to “become the first institutional investor behind entrepreneurs”, focusing on life sciences, artificial intelligence (AI), new energy, new materials, and other tech frontiers.
Alongside the USD fund, Fudan also announced the establishment of an RMB-denominated direct investment fund dubbed “Fudan Science and Technology Innovation Investment Fund (复旦科创投资基金)” to dedicate to helping its ecosystem of top scientists turn their research projects into commercially-viable ventures.
Fudan did not disclose the size of the RMB direct investment fund. A report by Shanghai Securities News, a state-owned publication, said that the fund plans to invest 1 billion yuan ($141.4 million).
The launch of its dual-currency funds will see Fudan work with partners, including Shanghai State-Owned Capital Investment, a state-owned investment group in Shanghai City with total assets of almost 150.5 billion yuan ($21.3 billion) by the end of 2024.
Dai Minmin, president of Shanghai State-owned Capital Investment, said the group’s role as a state-owned capital investment and operational platform is strategically positioned to focus on “fund management plus innovation incubation.”
The state group prioritises early-stage and small-scale deeptech startups, especially those in Shanghai’s forerunner industries, namely semiconductor, biopharmaceutical, and AI, whose collective industry scale in the city reached 1.8 trillion yuan ($254.6 billion) by the end of 2024.
In December 2023, Fudan announced the launch of its tech innovation fund-of-funds (FOF) with 1 billion yuan in its first close.
