• NetEase Cloud Music

  Led · Series A · Apr 2017

  NetEase Cloud Music is a music-streaming service run by NetEase that hosts a catalog of more than 10 million songs and emphasizes independent music. The company says it reaches 600 million users, a figure that grew by about 200 million over the past year. Its indie-focused roster includes roughly 1.2 million tracks from around 70,000 independent musicians. NetEase Cloud Music recently closed a fresh $600 million injection and said it will use the funds to pursue further user growth and platform development. NetEase will remain the majority shareholder following this deal. The business was previously valued at over $1 billion after a 750 million RMB round raised last year. NetEase Cloud Music is a Chinese online music platform launched in April 2013 and led by CEO Zhu Yiwen. The service enables over 300 million people to discover and share music. The company announced a RMB 750 million (approx. USD 108m) Series A financing that valued it at about RMB 8 billion (approx. USD 1.16 billion). Raised capital will be used to enhance user experience, increase investment in content, develop a patent system, and establish solutions for upstream and downstream music to provide users with quality music. Its core product centers on music discovery, social sharing, and content investment. The financing positions the company to expand content and product capabilities while developing IP and solutions across the music value chain.

• Baobab Studios

  Participated · Series B · Oct 2016

  Baobab Studios creates character-driven virtual reality animated experiences, emphasizing storytelling over technical novelty. Its notable work includes the 6-minute VR short “Invasion!”, which attracted Hollywood attention and is being turned into a feature film by Roth Kirschenbaum. The company announced a next project titled “Asteroids!” and says its core tech will enable new storytelling techniques for VR creators. Baobab has partnered with major platform players—previous investors include Samsung and HTC—and its title “Invasion!” was included on the PlayStation VR demo disc. The studio has about 20 employees and is expanding its executive team, adding former Pixar/Dreamworks exec Larry Cutler as CTO and bringing Within CEO Chris Milk onto its advisory board. Financially, Baobab has raised a total of $31 million to date following its latest round and positions storytelling as central to driving VR adoption as hardware becomes widely available. Baobab Studios is a US virtual reality animation content and technology company that creates story- and character-driven cinematic experiences. It produces animated short films for VR platforms; its first short, Invasion, is available in Samsung Gear VR. The company plans to work with HTC to distribute its movies on the Vive platform in the coming year. On June 12, 2015 Baobab raised $6m in a Series A funding round. Backers included Comcast Ventures, Samsung Ventures, HTC, Advancit Capital, Chernin Group, TheBoxGroup, Peter Thiel, Zynga co-founder Mark Pincus and other angel investors. Leadership includes Maureen Fan (CEO), Eric Darnell (Chief Creative Officer) and Michael Hutchinson (Chief Scientist Officer).

No current team members are available.