Insider Brief
- Matter Venture Partners has closed its second fund at $450 million to back early-stage HardTech startups across areas including semiconductors, robotics, AI infrastructure, quantum computing and advanced manufacturing.
- The fund follows Matter’s 2023 launch and will draw on a network of strategic limited partners including ASML, TSMC, Quanta Computer, Nitto Denko and the Development Bank of Japan.
- Matter’s portfolio includes startups working on robotics, AI data center infrastructure, chip design, Physical AI and low-power processors, with several portfolio companies announcing major financing, commercial or exit milestones.
PRESS RELEASE — Matter Venture Partners today announced the close of its second fund at $450 million. The fund will go towards backing early-stage HardTech startups across semiconductors, robotics and Physical AI, AI infrastructure, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, energy building blocks, and AI for the advancement of science.
HardTech has attracted rapidly growing interest from investors as AI drives huge demand for faster chips, more efficient computing, greater data-center capacity, and intelligent machines that can operate reliably in complex, real-world environments. Yet building these companies requires more than just capital. It requires judgment, relationships shaped by years of experience, and all the lessons learned along the way. HardTech founders have to simultaneously navigate technical development, manufacturing, supply chains, commercialization and customer delivery and services. Matter Venture Partners was established in 2023 to provide the ecosystem and support to address these specific challenges.
The firm was founded by Wen Hsieh, Haomiao Huang, and Mel Tang, who have spent their careers helping to build and scale ground-breaking HardTech companies. Wen spent 17 years at Kleiner Perkins, where he led the firm’s HardTech practice as a General Partner. Haomiao Huang is a repeat tech entrepreneur and engineer who invested alongside Wen at Kleiner Perkins, before co-founding Matter. Mel Tang has helped lead technology businesses through critical stages of growth as CFO of Ring and Demand Media. Since founding Matter, they’ve built a global team with immense technical depth, operating experience, and close industry relationships.
“The operator perspective is at the heart of how we work with founders at Matter,” emphasized Mel Tang, Founding Operating Partner and CFO. “As prior founders and startup executives who have built and scaled HardTech companies, we bring our learnings to help founders anticipate challenges and scale with greater speed and discipline.”
Among Matter’s strategic limited partners are ASML, Development Bank of Japan, Kleiner Perkins, Nitto Denko, Quanta Computer, Resonac, Sojitz, and TSMC. These industry leaders and others bring expertise spanning equipment development, contract manufacturing, energy management, advanced materials, precision manufacturing and automation, technology commercialization and institutional capital. These strategic LPs work closely with Matter’s portfolio companies as technology collaborators, early customers, co-investors, manufacturing partners, suppliers, and easy entry points into specific industry ecosystems.
“HardTech is global from day one,” said Wen Hsieh, Founding Managing Partner. “Scaling HardTech startups requires navigating complex supply chains, manufacturing scaleup, technology partnerships, talent management, and customer relationships around the world. At Matter, we’ve built a global network to extend our hands-on support to portfolio companies through our operating partners, advisors and limited partners in the U.S., Taiwan, Japan, Europe, Singapore, The Middle East, South Korea, and Mexico.”
Matter has already invested in some of the most consequential startups shaping the HardTech industry today. Q.ai was acquired by Apple in January 2026. Rhoda AI announced a $450 million Series A in March 2026 to advance robotic intelligence that can quickly deploy in real-world environments. Eridu is building a 10x faster network switch to dramatically improve the GPU utilization and energy efficiency of AI data centers. Path Robotics, which is building Physical AI for heavy manufacturing, recently entered into an agreement with Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) to accelerate and scale shipbuilding in the United States. Volta is a neo-neocloud that recently came out of stealth with a $10B AI lab partnership and $5B AI infrastructure program. ChipAgents uses agentic AI to significantly reduce the chip design timelines of its marquee semiconductor customers by up to 80%. And Ambiq–with its ultra-low power processors that are used in most of today’s AI-enabled wearables such as ŌURA and Garmin–completed its initial public offering in July 2025.
“If AI is going to eat the world, hardware will be its teeth,” said Haomiao Huang, Founding Partner. “HardTech needs founders that can look at the future and build compounding systems where today’s gain makes tomorrow’s progress even faster. We built Matter to back the founders solving these bottlenecks and to give them the experience and relationships to help accelerate breakthrough ideas to real-world scale.”
Similar to its first fund, Matter’s second fund will fund and help accelerate early-stage startups solving critical challenges across HardTech.
