Matter Venture Partners Closes $450 Million Fund II For HardTech, Robotics, And Physical AI Startups

Matter Venture Partners has closed its second fund at $450 million to invest in early-stage HardTech companies spanning semiconductors, robotics and Physical AI, AI infrastructure, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, energy technologies and AI applications for scientific research.

The new fund significantly expands the capital available to the Silicon Valley venture firm as artificial intelligence drives growing demand for faster chips, more efficient computing infrastructure, larger data centers and intelligent machines capable of operating in complex physical environments.

Matter was founded in 2023 by Wen Hsieh, Haomiao Huang and Mel Tang, a team whose backgrounds span venture investing, entrepreneurship, engineering and operating leadership.

Hsieh spent 17 years at Kleiner Perkins, where he led the firm’s HardTech practice as a Managing Partner. Huang is an engineer and repeat technology entrepreneur who previously invested alongside Hsieh at Kleiner Perkins. Tang has held senior financial roles at Ring, SpinLaunch and Demand Media.

Matter argues that building HardTech startups requires a different venture model than backing conventional software companies.

Founders must simultaneously navigate research and development, manufacturing, global supply chains, commercialization, customer deployment and capital-intensive scaling. The firm is designed to provide both financing and access to operating expertise and strategic industry relationships.

That model is reflected in Matter’s limited partner base.

Fund II’s LPs include semiconductor equipment company ASML, Development Bank of Japan, Kleiner Perkins, materials company Nitto Denko, electronics manufacturer Quanta Computer, chemical and semiconductor materials company Resonac, trading company Sojitz and semiconductor manufacturing giant TSMC.

Matter said those investors are intended to function as more than passive sources of capital.

Its strategic LP network can work with portfolio companies as technology collaborators, prospective customers, co-investors, manufacturing partners and suppliers while helping startups establish relationships across major industrial ecosystems.

The global nature of the network is particularly important for HardTech companies because manufacturing and supply chains often span multiple continents from the earliest stages of development.

Matter has built operating relationships across Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Mexico, the Middle East and Europe to help portfolio companies navigate manufacturing scale-up, partnerships, recruiting and customer development.

The firm’s existing portfolio illustrates the range of technologies it is targeting.

Matter backed Q.ai, which was acquired by Apple in January 2026, and robotics company Rhoda AI, which announced a $450 million Series A earlier this year to develop robotic intelligence for real-world environments.

Its investments also include Eridu, which is developing networking technology intended to improve GPU utilization and energy efficiency in AI data centers, and Path Robotics, a provider of robotic welding systems that has entered agreements with Huntington Ingalls Industries to support U.S. shipbuilding.

Matter has also invested in Volta, which emerged from stealth with a $10 billion AI laboratory partnership and a $5 billion infrastructure program, as well as ChipAgents, which uses agentic AI to shorten semiconductor design timelines.

Another portfolio company, Ambiq, develops ultra-low-power processors used in AI-enabled wearables including products from ŌURA and Garmin. Ambiq completed its initial public offering in July 2025.

Fund II will continue the strategy established with Matter’s first fund by concentrating primarily on early-stage companies solving technically difficult problems where software and artificial intelligence intersect with physical systems.

That opportunity has expanded substantially with the AI boom.

AI infrastructure requires more advanced semiconductors, networking systems, energy technologies and data-center hardware, while Physical AI is creating demand for robots and autonomous systems capable of bringing increasingly sophisticated intelligence into factories, warehouses and other real-world environments.

Matter believes those constraints will create opportunities for startups capable of addressing the bottlenecks that prevent AI systems from scaling efficiently into the physical economy.

The firm’s broader strategy is to pair specialized technical investing knowledge with industry partnerships that can help startups move from laboratory breakthroughs to commercial manufacturing and deployment.

Matter’s $450 million Fund II gives the firm substantially more capital to pursue that thesis as HardTech becomes an increasingly important component of the global AI investment landscape.

“The operator perspective is at the heart of how we work with founders at Matter. As prior founders and startup executives who have built and scaled HardTech companies, we bring our learnings to help HardTech founders anticipate challenges and scale with greater speed and discipline.”

Mel Tang, Founding Operating Partner and CFO of Matter Venture Partners

“HardTech is global from day one. Scaling HardTech startups requires navigating complex supply chains, manufacturing scaleup, technology partnerships, talent management and customer relationships around the world.”

Wen Hsieh, Founding Managing Partner of Matter Venture Partners

“If AI is going to eat the world, hardware will be its teeth. HardTech needs founders that can look at the future and build systems where AI’s gain makes AI’s progress even faster.”

Haomiao Huang, Founding Partner at Matter Venture Partners