The VCs who long ran GGV Capital, the 24-year-old cross-border firm that helped act as a bridge between the U.S. and China, have settled on two new brands about six months after announcing they would split their U.S. and Asia operations .
Veteran investors Jenny Lee and Jixun Foo have just rebranded their Singapore operation as Granite Asiaas the first mentionted in Forbes. Meanwhile, Hans Tung, a company co-founder who lives in the Bay Area, announced in X yesterday which is now called Team USA Worthwhile chapter.
GGV Capital announced last fall that it was splitting its team amid rising U.S.-China tensions, though it never cited the atmosphere as a clear driver of the move.
Similarly, Sequoia Capital split its operations last year as it grappled with geopolitical tensions. In the case of Sequoia, the US team kept the famous brand, while Sequoia India & Southeast Asia was renamed Peak XV Partners and Sequoia China was renamed HongShan, the Mandarin word for red wood.
The thinking behind dropping the GGV Capital brand, according to a familiar source, was that since both groups operate separately going forward, they felt it was better to develop new brands.
Granite Asia is led by Singaporeans Jenny Lee and Jixun Foo. Lee is a regular on Forbes’ Midas list of top VC performers, with nine IPOs in the past five years, including smartphone giant Xiaomi and software developer Kingsoft WPS, which went public in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
Foo, whose title was formerly global managing director of GGV Capital, is meanwhile credited with deals including electric car maker Xpeng Motors, which went public in 2020. Giant Didi, which reportedly plans to introduced in Hong Kong this year. and delivery company Grab, whose shares have underperformed since going public through a special-purpose buyout vehicle in late 2021. (It was reportedly in talks as recently as last month to merge with another beleaguered rival, GoTo Group.)
Granite Asia will focus on startups in China, Japan, South Asia, Australia and Southeast Asia.
Notable Capital – which says it plans to continue investing in the US, as well as Europe and Latin America – is led by the same investors who have been based in its Menlo Park office for many years. That includes Tung, who is Taiwanese-American and whose offerings include well-known brands like Airbnb, StockX and Slack. Jeff Richards, who has backed Coinbase, bluetooth tracker Tile and software developer Handshake. and Glenn Solomon. Its deals include HashiCorp, whose software helps companies operate in the cloud (reportedly weighs a sale right now); listed home buying platform Opendoor; and compliance automation startup Drata.
Oren Yunger, the newest member of GGV Capital, also remains on the Notable team. Yunger had joined GGV as an investor in 2018 and was promoted to managing director last fall.
Another long-time managing director of GGV Capital, Eric Xu, who is based in Shanghai, will continue to oversee the original firm’s yuan-denominated independent funds.
About 2.5 years ago, GGV Capital announced that it had raised $2.5 billion for its new funds, marking its largest fund family ever. The investors have since split those assets under management, along with previously raised funds, so that Granite Asia now manages a total of $5 billion, leaving Notable Capital with about $4.2 billion based on GGV Capital’s assets under management at the time the split was announced.
Pictured above, left to right: Jeff Richards, Eric Xu, Glenn Solomon, Jenny Lee, Jixun Foo and Hans Tung
