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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
  • Hardware
  • Robotics
  • AI
  • Computing Infrastructure
  • Autonomy
  • Deep Tech
  • IoT
  • Semiconductors
  • Frontier 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
Fund size
NPS

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.
Lead investor
Co Invest
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Manager's Experience

Bruce Leak (Co-Founder & General Partner) created QuickTime at Apple and co-founded WebTV, bringing decades of consumer technology and hardware operating expertise. Peter Barrett (Co-Founder & General Partner) previously served as CTO of CloudCar and Microsoft TV, pioneered video compression software, and has deep technical leadership across deep tech and AI. Matt Hershenson (Co-Founder & General Partner) co-founded Danger Inc. (acquired by Microsoft) and brings deep hardware engineering expertise. Pat Gelsinger (General Partner, joined 2025) is the former CEO of Intel and former CEO of VMware, bringing semiconductor industry leadership and enterprise tech operating expertise. The firm has closed Fund III at $410M and operates from an 80,000 sqft Palo Alto warehouse with portfolio companies co-located alongside the engineering studio.

Playground Ventures Contacts Information

Primary contact

Secondary contact

Team

Bruce Leak - Co-Founder & General Partner

Peter Barrett - Co-Founder & General Partner

Matt Hershenson - Co-Founder & General Partner

Pat Gelsinger - General Partner

Laurie Yoler - General Partner

Jory Bell - Partner

Portfolio

Agility Robotics

Robust.AI

Fabric

Boxbot

Velo3D

GigaCrop

Ideon

Element Zero

Ayar Labs

MosaicML

Strand Therapeutics

Ultima Genomics

Atomic AI

Manifold

NVision Imaging

PsiQuantum

Phasecraft

d-Matrix

NextSilicon

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