PE firm Chartered Group to raise US$500m for Japan-Israel deep tech fund

Singapore

SINGAPORE-BASED private equity firm Chartered Group is raising a US$500 million fund that seeks to invest in Israel-related deep tech firms and incubate them in Japan, as part of a collaboration with Mafat, the research and development unit of Israel's Ministry of Defence.

Chartered's new Japan Israel High Tech Ventures 2 LP fund seeks to make private equity investments in deep tech firms that are from Israel or that have founders who are connected to Israel. The fund will also facilitate incubation of the companies in Japan, so that these firms can easily work with Japanese corporate giants.

"With this new venture, we will attract Japanese conglomerates (with) a lot of new technologies that they do not normally have access to. We will invest in and incubate the companies in Japan, which will significantly shorten their time to market," said Chartered's chairman Eyal Agmoni. "With the collaboration with Mafat, we hope the portfolio (can) go to market quicker with higher probabilities for exit," he added.

The fund hopes to nurture deep tech firms in areas such as the enhancement of human capabilities, which would include brain-machine interfaces and exoskeletons. Other areas of interest include energy solutions, such as remote charging and high power lasers, and autonomous systems such as ground robotics.

The fund caters to the growing inflow of Japanese capital into Israeli startups. "With an ever-increasing number of delegations from leading Japanese firms scouting for Israeli startups and innovations, there was a need to create a vehicle where Japanese corporations could have access to technologies otherwise not available to them," the firm said in its press release.

There is also strategic value for both Japan and Israel "to develop fruitful collaborations which will hopefully lead to larger scale government to government projects", said Daniel Gold, the head of Mafat.

"The main technological areas of focus for this collaboration are viewed as being mission critical, as well as possess tremendous growth prospects both in the defence and civilian markets," added Dov Oster, the chief technology officer of Mafat.