Phoenix Venture Partners

Phoenix Venture Partners (PVP) is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm founded in 2009 and headquartered in San Mateo, California, with satellite offices in Singapore and Cambridge, Massachusetts. The firm specializes in taking transformative hard-technology innovations in advanced materials, novel devices, innovative manufacturing processes, and state-of-the-art tools from proof-of-concept to commercialization. Founder and Managing General Partner John Chen leads a team of seven, including five partners. PVP's core thesis targets what the firm calls Convergent Tech: the intersection of advanced materials, biology, and hardware with advanced computation and AI, investing in early-to-revenue-stage companies tackling pain points in computing, electronics, transportation, energy, industrial applications, and life sciences. Typical checks range from $100,000 to $7.5 million, and the firm leads Series A rounds. Over its 19-year history, PVP has made 85 investments, averaging two new investments per year in the last decade, and has recorded 3 IPOs and 17 acquisitions. Notable portfolio outcomes include AbSci (PVP led the 2016 Series A; AbSci listed on NASDAQ in July 2021 at a $1.45 billion market cap), NBD Nanotechnologies, and COTSWORKS (exited in July 2025). Recent investments include UbiQD (Series B-II in February 2026 as the most recent disclosed investment), Qolab (superconducting quantum computing), ORAN Development, and Nanofiber Quantum Technologies. Phoenix Venture Partners provides founders with hands-on support in business development, IP strategy, recruitment, and exit planning, leveraging a global network of strategic partners spanning manufacturing, government, and enterprise markets. Its specialist positioning in hard tech and advanced materials makes it one of the few firms capable of leading early institutional rounds in deep-science companies that require both technical diligence and long commercialization timelines.