2 hours ago - Business

Exclusive: Playground Global raises $475 million VC fund

Playground Global, an early-stage venture firm focused on deep-tech, tells Axios that it's raised $475 million for its fourth fund.

Why it matters: Playground remains iconoclastic in a venture capital market that's largely turned conformist.

For example, it believes in developing earthbound solutions to the problems that orbital data centers purport to solve — whether by investing in new compute architectures, semiconductor materials, or energy technologies.
"When software ate the world, Silicon Valley forgot about silicon," says Peter Barrett, co-founder and general partner of Playground Global

Zoom in: Palo Alto-based Playground previously raised $410 million for its third fund in 2022.

Unicorns in its portfolio include Agility Robotics, Ayar Labs, Branch Metrics, d-Matrix, NextSilicon, PsiQuantum, Skydio, Ultima Genomics, Unconventional AI, and Virta Health.