University endowments have backed a dollar-denominated venture capital fund from M31 Capital, whose earlier investments include Grail.

China-based investment firm M31 Capital has closed a $450m dollar-denominated fund having extended the contribution of existing LPs including unnamed university endowments, DealStreetAsia has reported.
The fund had originally sought $400m but reached this objective in early 2020 and was then expanded due to continued investor appetite.
M31 Capital has also secured contributions from unnamed insurance firms, sovereign wealth funds, family offices, fund-of-funds and individual entrepreneurs.
Founded in 2018, M31 Capital expects to back 12 to 15 companies through its new fund having traditionally focused on growth-stage, China-based businesses in sectors such as healthcare, media, telecoms and consumer tech.
The news comes with M31 Capital also seeking to raise its first yuan-denominated fund to specialise in healthcare and advanced technology applications, the firm’s founding partner, Patrick Zhong, told local news source PEdaily.
A big exit for M31 Capital came in 2016 when its cancer diagnostics investment Grail was purchased by genomic technology supplier Illumina. M31 Capital’s other bets have reportedly included ByteDance, developers of social video sharing platform TikTok.