By Matt Cheng, Founder & Solo GP, Cherubic Ventures
Today I’m happy to announce that Cherubic Ventures has closed its sixth fund at $68.88 million. The fund size reflects the auspicious meaning of the number eight in East Asian cultures, where it is traditionally associated with prosperity and good fortune. With Fund VI in place, total assets under management across our six funds have passed $500 million.
Fund VI means more to me than the amount raised. Ten years in, I’m even more certain about why I love early-stage investing. My greatest satisfaction comes from working alongside exceptional founders as they find their way through uncertainty and ultimately change an industry.
Before the world believes
Companies that genuinely change the world rarely start with good numbers, a finished product, or market consensus. Sometimes it’s a few people and an idea that sounds too early, too hard, or a little crazy.
The best founders, I think, are often the ones who notice a shift before most people do, and see an opportunity others haven’t recognized yet. They use new technology and new approaches to turn that view of the future into something real.
Industries and technologies have kept changing since Cherubic started in 2015, but I’ve always been looking for the same kind of founder: someone who sees new possibilities in change and has the conviction to make them real.
That’s why we remain committed to investing early: to be there with founders while the product is still unproven and the direction is unclear, working through trial and error together until we find the way forward.
Ten years alongside founders, finding the way through uncertainty
Ten years ago, when I started investing in early-stage startups globally from Taipei, no one knew whether a venture capital firm from Taiwan could reach the center of Silicon Valley, or whether the solo GP model could hold up across different market cycles.
I built Cherubic as a solo GP so I could judge independently, decide quickly, and be there early when I truly believe in a founder. Over ten years, that has shaped how I invest:
Judge independently. Don’t wait for signals.
As a solo GP, I don’t wait for an investment committee or for the market to move. When I believe in a founder, I can decide fast.
Start with the founder.
What I spend the most time understanding is how a founder sees the change underway, what they want to redefine, and why they’re the one with a shot at doing it.
From the first check.
I want to be there when a founder most needs someone to believe in them, and to stay with them from the earliest stage onward.
Stay through the uncertainty.
Early-stage investing happens before anything is settled. From the first check, I want to stay close to the founder and keep adjusting as we learn.
Ten years on, Cherubic has backed more than 200 companies worldwide. I was lucky to meet Hims & Hers, Flexport, Calm, Paidy, 91APP and Astranis while they were still early. Many of the startups I’ve backed have since gone public, become unicorns, or been acquired, and have built global influence.. Back then, all of them were just getting started, with their futures still full of uncertainty.
AI is reshaping industries, and the next generation of great companies is already forming
We’re at another major technological turning point. AI will be like the internet, smartphones, or cloud computing, becoming an underlying platform that reshapes industries. It will make existing companies more efficient and make possible a new set of companies that were previously hard to imagine.
Software is starting to do work on its own. Machines are starting to understand the physical world. Healthcare is moving toward earlier predictions. A company that once took hundreds of people to build may one day be built by a team of just over ten, and the problems founders take on will change with it.
Through this technological shift, I continue to look for founders who are redefining markets. Since 2024, the AI-native companies I’ve backed span infrastructure, developer tools, enterprise software, healthcare, physical AI and robotics, exploring what AI makes possible.
Fund VI is still early, but we’re already seeing some promising signs. The portfolio has attracted more than $500 million in follow-on funding. The companies I’ve backed include Entire, the developer platform founded by former GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke; the robotics company Sudo AI; the AI patent technology platform Patlytics; and Max AI, Generation Lab and therapiAI, which are using AI to rework healthcare workflows and drug development.
Entire raised one of the largest seed rounds ever in developer tools. Sudo AI, founded about two years ago, is now valued at close to $2 billion. Its sudo R1 robotic system is trained through virtual simulation and can reliably handle objects it has never encountered without relying on real-world manipulation data.
Conviction before consensus
The past ten years have made me even more certain that believing in a founder before the answers are clear, and staying with them, is an important part of early-stage investing. To me, that’s conviction before consensus. It’s what Cherubic has done for ten years, and what we’ll continue with Fund VI.
Over that time, we’ve built a wider global network of founders, and some of my most important investments have grown out of relationships built over years.
Fund VI is the start of Cherubic’s second decade. Two things won’t change in the decade ahead: stay early, and keep building the future we want to see alongside exceptional founders.
The next companies to truly change the world may not have taken shape yet. If you’re working to make the future you believe in real, I hope I get the chance to build it with you.
