Playground Ventures Fund IV

Playground Ventures

cb Email

Status

ACTIVE

Global HQ

Tel Aviv, Israel

Countries of investment

United States
United Kingdom
Canada
Israel
France
Germany

Investment stages

Seed
Series A
Series B

Industries

Deep Tech
Robotics
AI
Quantum Computing
Aerospace
Space Tech
Logistics
Industrial Tech

About
Playground Ventures is a Palo Alto-based VC focused on early-stage deep tech and hardware startups. Their focus spans robotics, AI, hardware, semiconductors, and frontier tech across the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Israel, France, and Germany. The firm supports founders from Seed through Series B.

Min check size: $1M
Max check size: $20M
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Investment Thesis

Playground Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm deploying capital across deep tech, hardware, robotics, AI, and frontier technology sectors. They invest in founders building category-defining hardware and deep tech companies leveraging the firm's in-house engineering studio model to accelerate product development. The firm differentiates itself through its founder Andy Rubin (creator of Android at Google), unique engineering studio approach providing portfolio companies with hands-on technical and operational support, and deep relationships across Silicon Valley's hardware ecosystem.

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Manager's Experience

Founded in 2015 in Palo Alto, with Andy Rubin, Bruce Leak, Matt Hershenson, and Peter Barrett named as founders. Today's General Partners are Peter Barrett, Jory Bell, Pat Gelsinger, and Bruce Leak, joined by Partners Benjamin Kim, Rahul Meka, and Daniel Yum, Principal Marissa Ramirez de Chanlatte, and Venture Partners Matt Hershenson, Sasha Ostojic, Richard Peretz, and Laurie Yoler, with Kendra Perlitz as Chief Operating Officer. Reports $1.7B under management, with a $475M fourth fund announced in May 2026. Backed PsiQuantum, Ultima Genomics, d-Matrix, Ayar Labs, Agility Robotics, Strand Therapeutics, Velo3D, Relativity Space, and MosaicML, which Databricks acquired. Headquartered at 380 Portage Avenue in Palo Alto. Backs technical founders in early-stage deep tech across engineered biology, next-generation compute, automation, and the energy transition, investing somewhere between improbable and impossible.