 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Hardware Venture Capital |
| Founded | 2015 |
| Headquarters | Palo Alto, California |
Key people |
|
| Website | Official website |
Playground Global, LLC is a venture capital firm established in 2015 and located in Palo Alto, CA, which focuses on early-stage deep tech investments. [1] [2] [3]
Playground Global is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests across next gen compute, automation, energy transition and decarbonization, engineered biology. [1] [2] [3] The company was founded in 2015 by Andy Rubin, Bruce Leak, Matt Hershenson and Peter Barrett. [4] Playground offers startups support with engineering, distribution, manufacturing and financing in exchange for equity. [3]
The firm invests exclusively in technical founders taking large technology risks. [3] Playground's portfolio consists of companies including PsiQuantum, Relativity Space, Ultima Genomics, and MosaicML (acq. by Databricks), d-Matrix, Strand Therapeutics and Velo3D (NYSE: SPFR). [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
Barrett was a teenage software programmer. [11] His early work in security attracted the attention of the NSA, and he went on to found Rocket Science Games. [12] His career includes developing a widely used video codec, building a popular IPTV platform at Microsoft, and working on cloud intelligence for automotive at CloudCar. [13] He currently focuses on quantum and optical computing, robotics, and artificial intelligence at Playground. [14] Peter holds over 100 patents. [11]
Bruce Leak, a Founding Partner at Playground Global, has a long and distinguished career in technology. [15] In his early years, he interned at Microsoft and Apple, where he worked on projects like Microsoft Word and QuickTime. [16] He later co-founded Rocket Science Games and WebTV, two companies that helped shape the early days of the internet. [17] After founding several other startups, Bruce co-founded Playground Global. [18]
Hershenson began his career at Apple, working in manufacturing engineering and later in the PowerBook design group. [19] In 2000, he co-founded Danger, a company that produced the first consumer smartphone, the T-Mobile Sidekick. [20] After Danger was acquired by Microsoft, Matt served as a Partner in Hardware Engineering. [20] [21]
Matt later joined Google's Android team as director of hardware, overseeing the development of various devices. [22] In 2014, he co-founded Playground, a venture capital firm focused on investing in and supporting tech companies. [21]
Jory Bell is a General Partner at Playground Global, joining the firm in 2015 as Vice President. [23] His educational background includes three undergraduate degrees from MIT, and he has experience as a researcher at the MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute climate change program. [24] [25]
He has held roles as a laptop designer at Apple and founder of OQO, a Guinness World Record-holding computer hardware and software company. [26] At Playground Global, he has facilitated successful investments in various deep tech domains and played a key role in securing early investments for the firm. [10] He focuses on engineered biology which makes up 30% of Playground’s investments. [27]
Benjamin Kim is a Partner at Playground Global, specializing in identifying and investing in companies focused on engineered biology. [28] He has led investments in various biotech firms and holds board positions in a number of them.
Kim did his PhD in bioengineering from Stanford University and a fellowship at Playground Global. [29] He has a strong background in bioengineering and biomedical engineering, which he leverages to analyze and invest in biotech companies. [30] He has also been recognized for his expertise, presenting at the 2023 BIO International Convention on immunotherapy advancements. [31]
Yoler served as a board member and strategic advisor at Zoox, President of Qualcomm Labs at Qualcomm, and founder and manager of GrowthPoint Technology Partners. [32] [33] Her expertise spans strategic M&A transactions, fundraising, and technological innovation, particularly in AI and debit card services. [34] [35]
Yoler contributed to Sun Microsystems' rise as a leading software server platform.[ citation needed ] She was on the board of Tesla. [32]
In May 2019, Playground returned Rubin's investment and removed him from management, following reports of sexual misconduct alleged to have occurred in 2013 while Rubin was an executive at Google. [36] His smartphone company, Essential Products, remained under the Playground umbrella. [37] Rubin's Essential Products company failed in February 2020, prompting a rebuild of Playground Global. [38] [39]
Playground Global has raised $1.2 billion across three funds, [14] starting with $300 million in 2015 from its limited partners including Google, HP, Foxconn, Redpoint Ventures, Seagate Technology and Tencent, among others. [3] [4] This was followed by $500 million raised during Fund II in 2016. [40] [38] 20% of Playground’s portfolio companies are Unicorns. [41]
In June 2015, Playground Global was part of a $20.5 million series A funding round for Nervana Systems, an AI software company acquired by Intel in 2016. [42] In 2017, Playground Global backed Owl Labs, a conferencing devices company, with $1.3 million in seed money. [43] [44] In December 2017, Playground Global led a seed round of $5.7 million for FarmWise to commercialize its automated weeding robot and to continue building autonomous systems which can harvest food for farmers. [45] [46] Playground's Bruce Leak also joined their board of directors. [47] In March 2018, Playground Global led a $35 million funding round for Relativity Space, a startup that develops small launch vehicles with the use of 3-D printing technologies. Playground's Jory Bell joined Relativity's board. [48] In November 2018, Playground Global led a $30 million Series B Funding round for RapidSOS, an emergency response data provider. [49] Nearly a third of Playground’s investments are in engineered biology. [10]
Regarding Playground’s investment in Agility in March 2024, Peggy Johnson joined the company as CEO. [50] Peggy recently held the position of CEO at Magic Leap, a spatial computing company. [51] During her tenure, she spearheaded the company's transition from consumer to enterprise focus, oversaw its restructuring and recapitalization, and introduced Magic Leap 2, a leading AR headset designed for business applications. [52] Before joining Magic Leap, Peggy spent six years at Microsoft as Executive Vice President of Business Development, reporting directly to CEO Satya Nadella. [51] [53] In this role, she was responsible for driving strategic partnerships and transactions to fuel growth for both Microsoft and its clients. [53] Notably, Peggy founded M12, Microsoft's inaugural corporate venture fund, which amassed a portfolio of over 80 companies within three years. [50] Prior to her time at Microsoft, Peggy spent 24 years at Qualcomm, where she served on the Executive Committee and held various leadership roles spanning marketing, sales, engineering, and business development. [50]
Since 2017, investing through its $500 million second fund, Playground has backed life sciences companies to apply technology in areas such as engineering biological systems. [54] Towards the end of 2017, the firm made an investment in Ultima, a company that maintained a low profile until May. [54] At that point, Ultima announced it had secured around $600 million in venture capital to further develop its DNA-sequencing technology. [55]
Notable Investments
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