Venture Firm Formation8 Seeks $100M for IoT Hardware Startup Fund

Venture capital firm Formation8 is launching a $100 million fund devoted to backing hardware startups in the U.S., Asia and Israel with an Internet of Things (IoT) tie-in, according to a BuzzFeed report.

The new VC fund reportedly will concentrate on 3D printing, semiconductors, automobiles, robotics, drones, weareables and smart home devices, based on the Formation8 slide presentation BuzzFeed posted.

Formation8 filed documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) dated May 20, 2015 signaling its plans to establish the VC fund.

The fund, called the Formation8 Partners Hardware Fund, will be based in San Francisco and led by Lior Susan, who joined the venture firm this year from Flextronics’ LabIX, and overseen by Brett Cummings, Formation8 COO and CFO, according to SEC documents. Flextronics reportedly is an investor in the fund.

In its initial phase, the Formation8 hardware fund will invest up to $3 million in seed or Series A deals with a $5 million maximum investment, BuzzFeed reported. The VC’s slideshow claims there’s a “whitespace” in the “hardware startup ecosystem,” with no hardware specific funds in operation, five hardware incubators, only 250 hardware startups funded annually and a relatively small $850 million doled out in annual hardware venture funding.

BuzzFeed suggested Formation8 likely will work its contacts in Silicon Valley and Asia to supply the fund, based on founder Joe Lonsdale Silicon Valley background and the VC’s presence in Korean, Singapore and China.

The VC’s prior investments include Illumio, Radius and Oculus, where it scored a big hit when Facebook (FB) bought the virtual reality developer for $2 billion. Salesforce.com (CRM) bought another of Formation8’s targets, big data developer RelatelQ, for $390 million in July, 2014.

To this point, prior to the dedicated hardware startup fund, Formation8 has invested in six hardware companies.

Andy Rubin’s Playground Global likely is one of the hardware incubators Foundation8 recognizes. This past April, Rubin, Google’s (GOOG) former Android founder and guru, launched Playground Global to help hardware device makers with manufacturing, distribution, financing, integration with the cloud.

The incubator is backed by some $48 million in funding from Google, Hewlett-Packard, Seagate (STX), along with Taiwan’s Hon Hai (Foxconn), China’s Tencent Holdings and venture capital firm Redpoint Ventures, where Rubin also is a partner.

Rubin, who founded Android and sold it to Google in 2005 after stints at Apple (AAPL) and General Magic, has characterized Playground as a “studio” where engineers, entrepreneurs and inventors are free to experiment with new designs and ideas without concern over running a business.