Altos Ventures
Correction 6/14 7:51am KST: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Altos Ventures had completed the 1st fundraising for the Altos Korea Opportunity Fund, instead of all fundraising. It also incorrectly named one contributor to the fund, which has been removed.
Altos Ventures, a U.S.-based venture capital (VC) firm, has raised more than US$500 million (about 64.57 billion won), the largest fund since its inception, to invest exclusively in Korean venture firms and startups.
Altos Ventures completed all fundraising for the US$500 million Altos Korea Opportunity Fund (KOF) L.P. No. 6, a fund dedicated to investing in Korean startups, according to sources in the investment banking industry on June 11. As the fund is waiting for Korean and international investors to make additional investments, the size is expected to exceed US$500 million.
Since launching KOF 1 in 2014, Altos Ventures has established a new fund every two to three years. This sixth fund came one year and six months after the fifth fund, which was raised with approximately US$500 million at the end of 2021. This brings Altos Ventures’ total KO amount for investments in Korean venture and startup companies to US$1.5 billion (approximately 2 trillion won) over 10 years.
Most of the investors in the sixth fund are overseas institutions with large amounts of money from prestigious private university funds in the United States. Harvard University, Northwestern University, Vanderbilt University, and Duke University are among the investors in Altos’ Fund 6.
The reason why Altos Ventures was able to establish the large Korean investment fund with only private funds from overseas is that it has recorded remarkable results by investing in Korean startups. Some of its big success cases are Coupang, Baemin (food delivery service), Hyperconnect, Crafton, and 29CM. On top of that, Altos has stakes in Toss (Viva Republica), Carrot Market, Jikbang, Kream and others as an early investor, so it expects to recover tens to hundreds of times its original investment in the coming years.