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venture capital firm USV announced it had raised 900000000 USD a new fund and will increase investment in AI, robotics and other sectors

BlockBeats reported that October 9, venture capital firm Union Square Ventures (USV) announced the launch of a new fund totaling 900000000 USD, focusing on innovative startups in large markets driven by technological change.USV said that AI infrastructure development is accelerating, and AI tools enable entrepreneurs to turn ideas into actual products within days and deploy AI agent teams at lower cost, but product competition has consequently become more intense. To this end,USV expanded its investment team by adding Anchor co-founder Michael Mignano as a general partner, GroupMe co-founder Jared Hecht as a venture partner, and Behance co-founder and former Adobe chief product officer Scott Belsky as a product advisor partner.USV Its core fund previously totaled 275000000 USD, and the new fund is significantly larger. The firm said that AI has lowered the barriers to product development while increasing demand for financing from high-quality startups, the size of financing rounds, and valuations. More capital is therefore needed to lead more financing rounds, extend the support period for portfolio companies, and expand into capital-intensive areas such as robotics, manufacturing, and energy. However,USV plans to maintain approximately the same number of investments as in previous funds and continue to follow an investment-thesis-driven approach, focusing on companies' business models, teams, and products.

In terms of investment strategy,USV proposed four core directions: using AI to fundamentally reshape existing markets rather than merely improve the efficiency of traditional businesses; using physical intelligence and AI to access offline data that was previously difficult to reach, investing in related software, robotics, manufacturing, and sensor networks; supporting intelligent products that achieve better alignment of interests in areas such as trust, security, memory, and cost; and increasing investment in energy by integrating into the core fund the energy investments it had previously pursued through dedicated funds since 2021.USV said that its investment rationale continues the philosophy of 2004 focused on internet infrastructure, while it now places its bets on AI and intelligent technologies to find companies that can use them to reshape large markets.

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