Venture capitalist Tan Lip-Bu kickstarts NTU’s S$50 million venture capital fund with S$5 million investment

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and leading global venture capital (VC) firm Walden International are launching a new VC fund to support deep tech spin-offs from the University. Known as the Nanyang Frontier Fund, it has an initial target sum of S$50 million. The Nanyang Frontier Fund is Singapore’s first venture capital fund dedicated to a university.

Mr Tan Lip-Bu (left in above photo), Chairman of Walden International, and his associates are committing an investment of S$5 million to kickstart the fund, with NTU co-investing another S$5 million.

The Nanyang Frontier Fund was launched on 4 November 2024 by Guest-of-Honour, Mr Heng Swee Keat, Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the National Research Foundation.

Mr Tan Lip-Bu is a globally renowned venture capitalist with almost four decades of experience in the tech industry. Dubbed the “pioneer of Asian VC” by Forbes for pioneering the US venture capital concept in Asia, he has been instrumental in the success of numerous global tech startups.

“We are very fortunate to have the strong backing of Lip-Bu in the establishment of our first VC fund. His global experience will be invaluable not just in the NTU entrepreneurship eco-system but also in Singapore. Lip-Bu has had a long relationship with the University, from the days when he was a student at Nanyang University in the 1970s. He was also a Trustee of NTU from 2006 to 2011 and he has been following NTU’s rapid rise in global prominence in science and technology,” said NTU President Prof Ho Teck Hua.

Mr Tan said, “I am a significant investor in similar VC funds that focus on supporting research of faculty members and students at Stanford University and UC Berkeley. I am also instrumental in helping to commercialise their ideas into successful businesses. Moreover, I am very actively involved as investor, board member, and mentor with more than two dozen startups founded by university faculty members and students that focus on disruptive and innovative technology in sectors including deep tech, GenAI, and Al-driven drug discovery, such as SambaNova Systems, Snorkel, Lion Semiconductor, Virtue AI, Greenstone Biosciences, Artera.ai, Together.ai, and Exostellar.”

"I strongly believe Nanyang Frontier Fund can identify startups of disruptive technology from NTU and Singapore, and it can nurture and scale them to become Singapore-based global companies," added Mr Tan.

Through his leadership at Walden International and other ventures, Mr Tan has invested in and built innovative technological companies, helping them to raise billions of dollars in capital funding, and scaling their businesses across diverse technology sectors, including semiconductors, AI, and cloud infrastructure.

In June 2024, Mr Tan had gifted S$3 million to his alma mater to set up a new professorship in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support research and education at NTU’s College of Computing and Data Science.

Click here for the full press release.