GGV Capital Aims To Raise $1.88 Billion Across Several New Venture Funds

Around lunchtime on Monday, GGV Capital filed paperwork with the SEC indicating the firm’s intent to raise $1.88 billion across a number of new funds. If it is successful in raising the proposed amounts, this would be the largest pool of capital the cross-border venture capital firm—which has offices in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing—has closed to date.

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A number of funds are listed in the filing:

• GGV Capital VII LP
• GGV Capital VII-A LP
• GGV Capital VII Plus LP
• GGV Capital VII-A Plus LP
• GGV Discovery II LP
• GGV Discovery II-A LP
• GGV Capital VII Entrepreneurs Fund LP

The filing also lists the limited liability companies that manage each cluster of funds. All entities are domiciled in the Cayman Islands. At this time, no capital has been raised for any of the investment vehicles.

Crunchbase News called the office of GGV Capital. We spoke with someone who said she was not able to comment about the filing and could not say why. She declined to answer follow-up questions not directly related to this filing. The conversation was cordial, but brief.

GGV Capital’s recent investments include participation in China-based peer-to-peer education platform Zuoyebang’s $350 million Series D, leading New York-based HR data management platform Namely’s $60 million Series E, and even participating in TrustToken’s $20 million initial coin offering to venture investors. GGV Capital has also invested in the likes of Alibaba, Square, and Pandora, among others, before they exited.

This being said, we have some context clues to run off of. These new funds follow a similar naming pattern to the $1.2 billion fundraise GGV announced back in April 2016. At the time, TechCrunch reported that GGV Capital has its main fund, a Plus fund “to back its most promising companies as they mature,” a Discovery fund “that will focus largely on seed-stage opportunities in China,” and a small Entrepreneurs fund “that consists largely of company founders as LPs and that will invest pro rata across the funds.”

Here’s how the $1.2 billion raised for its 2016 vintage of funds was distributed:

• $675 million (or 56.25 percent) was allocated to its sixth main fund
• $225 million (or 18.75 percent) was allocated to its late-stage focused Plus fund
• $250 million (or 20.83 percent) went toward the seed-focused Discovery fund
• $50 million (4.16 percent) was raised for the Entrepreneurs fund

At this time, it’s unclear how GGV Capital plans to divvy up the $1.88 billion sum it’s slated to raise. It wouldn’t be surprising, though, to see proportionately more capital allocated to the later-stage Plus fund. Considering the record tear of late-stage deal-making worldwide, Chinese startups’ tit-for-tat raises of supergiant VC rounds, and Chinese startups’ expanded position in the fundraising landscape, all trends point to growing late-stage funds. Of course, that’s something we’ll have to wait and see about later as new information is disclosed.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias