Taiwan's oldest university has tapped graduates to invest in its first investment fund.
National Taiwan University has formed a fund to invest in startups founded by its alumni, as it seeks to encourage more homegrown entrepreneurialism.
NTU Ventures, headed by Brandon Chiang, was launched last month after raising $21m from alumni of the university. It is seeking to raise the rest from the Taiwanese government.
The National Taiwan University, the oldest university in Taiwan, having been founded in 1928, has strong expertise in law, medicine and computer science. It helps students and faculty file patents, license technologies and spin out technologies through its technology transfer office.
The public research university wants to boost entrepreneurialism through the launch of the fund as many of its talented graduates chose to work in large corporations rather than start their own businesses. By launching a VC fund to back spinouts, it is hoped more graduates and professors will chose to commercialise their own inventions.
Taiwan’s economy is dominated by a handful of large corporates with their own internal research and development units, which often spin out their own companies.
One of Taiwan’s largest corporates is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which supplies most of the world’s computer chips and accounts for 25% of Taiwan’s GDP. “The most talented graduates go to TMSC because they can take lower risk with high compensation,” says Chiang. “More students are trying to find a low risk, high return job. And so, we are facing the problem of decreasing innovation in Taiwan.”
Defence tech startups attract investment
NTU Ventures’ first investment is in Tron Future Tech, a Taiwanese anti-drone defence tech startup whose chef technology officer, Borching Su, is an associate professor at National Taiwan University. The company raised a $29m series A round in May 2024.
Defence tech investment is ramping up in Taiwan as the government seeks to strengthen its defences against potential attack from neighbouring China, which claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has not ruled out the use of force to take control of the island.
In addition to investing in startups founded by students and professors, the fund will invest in companies started by National Taiwan University alumni. Half of its money will be invested in alumni founders living outside of Taiwan. This is a way for the fund to tap global VC markets, providing spinouts with more opportunity to scale internationally. It will also invest a small percentage of its money in non-NTU spinouts.
Other Asian universities are also seeking to access VC global markets such as spinout investment funds in Japan and Singapore. The National University of Singapore, for example, recently launched a $120m fund to support its spinouts and opened an office in Tokyo, Japan, to help investee companies gain access to the Japanese and south-east Asian markets.
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