Matter Venture Partners Closes $450M Fund II for HardTech

TL;DR

Matter Venture Partners has closed a $450 million Fund II to back early-stage HardTech companies working on semiconductors, robotics, physical AI, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, energy, and AI-for-science. The fund is roughly 50% larger than the firm's debut vehicle and is backed by an unusually strategic LP base that includes ASML, TSMC, Quanta Computer, and the Development Bank of Japan. It matters because it's a strong signal that the capital-intensive, hardware-heavy side of the AI buildout is attracting real institutional conviction, not just software-multiple money.

Key Takeaways

The LP roster is the real story here. ASML, TSMC, Quanta Computer, Nitto Denko, Resonac, Sojitz, and the Development Bank of Japan aren't typical fund-of-funds LPs chasing venture returns; they're strategic industrial players with a direct stake in seeing HardTech portfolio companies succeed commercially. That gives Matter's founders a supply-chain and go-to-market advantage that a pure financial LP base can't replicate.

Fund II's ~50% step-up tracks the broader HardTech re-rating. Capital that spent the last decade chasing software multiples is rotating toward physical infrastructure as AI's bottlenecks shift from model training to compute, power, and manufacturing capacity. A fund built specifically around semiconductors, robotics, and energy is positioned squarely at that rotation.

The team's Kleiner Perkins pedigree is doing real work. Wen Hsieh spent 17 years running HardTech investing at Kleiner Perkins before founding Matter, and co-founder Haomiao Huang also cut his teeth there as both an operator and investor. That's a rare combination in a category where generalist consumer/enterprise VCs frequently misprice technical and manufacturing risk.

An early exit and a fresh $450M Series A validate the thesis fast. Portfolio company Q.ai was acquired by Apple in January 2026, and Rhoda AI closed a $450 million Series A in March 2026 — both inside the life of Fund I. Quick proof points like these are exactly what let a young HardTech shop raise a bigger, more strategic-heavy Fund II so soon after its debut.

Fund Overview

Fund Name: Matter Venture Partners Fund II
Fund Size: $450 million
Stage: Early-stage (seed through Series A/B)
Check Size: Not publicly disclosed
Geography: Global — investments and LP relationships spanning the U.S., Taiwan, Japan, Europe, Singapore, the Middle East, South Korea, and Mexico
Focus: HardTech — semiconductors, robotics, physical AI, AI infrastructure, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, energy, and AI for science
Key LPs: ASML, Development Bank of Japan, Kleiner Perkins, Nitto Denko, Quanta Computer, Resonac, Sojitz, and TSMC

Why This Fund Matters

For most of the last fifteen years, venture capital's biggest funds chased software because software scaled cheaply and exited quickly. HardTech got starved of large, patient pools of capital because it requires longer time horizons, capital-intensive R&D, and manufacturing partnerships that don't fit a standard 10-year fund cycle. Matter Venture Partners' $450 million Fund II is a data point that this is changing, and changing quickly, as the AI buildout runs into physical constraints that no amount of software cleverness can solve.

What separates this fund from a generic "deep tech" vehicle is the LP base. When ASML, TSMC, and Quanta Computer write checks into a venture fund, they're not just seeking financial return — they're buying an options book on the next generation of semiconductor, robotics, and manufacturing startups before their larger competitors get a look. That's a meaningfully different dynamic than a fund raised primarily from fund-of-funds and family offices, and it should translate into faster customer validation and supply-chain access for Matter's portfolio companies.

The fund's sector spread — semiconductors, robotics, physical AI, quantum, advanced manufacturing, energy, and AI for science — is also a bet that these categories are converging rather than staying siloed. A robotics company today needs custom silicon; an energy startup increasingly needs AI-driven optimization; a quantum computing effort needs advanced manufacturing partners. Matter's positioning suggests it wants to be the fund that understands all of these dependencies at once, rather than a single-sector specialist that misses the connective tissue.

There's also a talent-flow story here. Wen Hsieh's 17-year run atop HardTech investing at Kleiner Perkins built one of the deepest technical and operator networks in the category, and Matter is clearly leveraging that network both for deal sourcing and for the strategic LP relationships that make this fund unusual. Expect more of Kleiner's HardTech-adjacent LPs and co-investors to show up in Matter's cap tables going forward.

The Team

Wen Hsieh is Matter's Founding Managing Partner. Before starting the firm, he spent 17 years as a General Partner running HardTech investing at Kleiner Perkins, giving him one of the longest continuous track records in venture-backed deep tech. Haomiao Huang, Matter's Founding Partner, is a serial technical entrepreneur and engineer who also invested at Kleiner Perkins before co-founding Matter, giving the firm an operator's lens on manufacturing and hardware execution risk that pure-financial investors often lack. Mel Tang serves as Founding Operating Partner and CFO, bringing finance leadership experience from his prior roles as CFO of Ring and Demand Media — relevant experience for a fund whose portfolio companies will often need to manage complex manufacturing costs and capital-intensive balance sheets. Mike Ichiriu holds the title of Venture Partner at the firm, a supporting role distinct from the two founding GPs.

Early Portfolio

Matter's Fund I portfolio has already produced concrete proof points. Q.ai was acquired by Apple in January 2026. Rhoda AI raised a $450 million Series A in March 2026 — a round roughly equal in size to Matter's entire new fund, underscoring how much capital HardTech and physical-AI companies are absorbing at even the early stages. Other portfolio names include Eridu, Path Robotics, Volta, ChipAgents, and Ambiq, which completed an IPO in July 2025.

What This Means for Founders

If you're building in semiconductors, robotics, physical AI, quantum, advanced manufacturing, energy, or AI-for-science, Matter is now one of the better-capitalized specialist funds you can pitch, and its strategic LP base means a check from Matter can come with real supply-chain and customer introductions attached — something generalist funds simply cannot offer. That's especially valuable for hardware-dependent startups that need access to fabs, materials suppliers, or large industrial customers well before they have the balance sheet to negotiate those relationships alone.

The tradeoff is that Matter is a thesis-driven, technically demanding investor. Founders should expect rigorous diligence on manufacturing feasibility, unit economics at scale, and supply-chain dependencies — this isn't a fund that will write a check on a slide deck and a strong narrative alone. Come prepared with a credible plan for how you get from prototype to production, and ideally a story for how one of Matter's strategic LPs could become a customer or partner.

Fund Momentum Take

We think Fund II's strategic-heavy LP base is the single most important thing about this raise, more so than the headline size. A financial LP wants a return; a strategic LP wants an outcome that benefits its own business, and that alignment tends to produce faster, stickier customer relationships for portfolio companies. If Matter can consistently convert its LP relationships into commercial traction for portfolio companies — which the Q.ai and Rhoda AI outcomes suggest it already can — this fund could punch well above its $450 million weight class.

The risk is concentration and dependency. A fund this closely tied to a handful of large industrial LPs needs to manage potential conflicts carefully — what happens if two portfolio companies compete for the same strategic LP's business, or if an LP's own strategic priorities shift away from a category Matter has bet on? Those are real governance questions for a fund at this LP-density, and how Matter navigates them over the life of Fund II will say a lot about whether this model scales into Fund III and beyond.

Our bet: HardTech-specialist funds with genuine operator pedigree and strategic industrial backing are going to keep outperforming generalist funds that dabble in the category opportunistically. Matter looks well-positioned to be one of the funds that benefits most from that shift.

Frequently Asked Questions

How big is Matter Venture Partners' Fund II?
Fund II closed at $450 million, according to the firm's own disclosures reported in September 2026.

What does Matter Venture Partners invest in?
The firm focuses on early-stage HardTech: semiconductors, robotics, physical AI, AI infrastructure, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, energy, and AI for science.

Who are the general partners at Matter Venture Partners?
Wen Hsieh (Founding Managing Partner) and Haomiao Huang (Founding Partner) lead the investment team. Mel Tang is Founding Operating Partner and CFO, and Mike Ichiriu holds the title of Venture Partner.

Who are Matter's limited partners?
Publicly reported strategic LPs include ASML, the Development Bank of Japan, Kleiner Perkins, Nitto Denko, Quanta Computer, Resonac, Sojitz, and TSMC.

What has Matter's Fund I portfolio produced so far?
Notable outcomes include Apple's acquisition of Q.ai in January 2026, a $450 million Series A for Rhoda AI in March 2026, and Ambiq's IPO in July 2025. Other portfolio companies include Eridu, Path Robotics, Volta, and ChipAgents.

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