VC fund briefs, week of Sept 14, 2009

Cisco commits to So. Korea fund

Cisco Systems

has committed $32 million to an $80 million VC fund managed by SkyLake Incuvest & Co., which will focus on investments in South Korea over the next eight years.

The Korea Venture Investment Co., Korea National Pension Service and Tongyang Life Insurance are co-investors in the fund with Cisco.

Called SkyLake Global Incuvest 4 (SGI4), the new fund was formally submitted to the Korean Financial Services Commission for approval last week.

In announcing the fund, Cisco says that SGI4 is the largest IT venture fund in Korea.

Earlier this year, San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco announced plans to set up a research centre in South Korea and invest or lend $500 million in the country’s technology and telecom sectors. In a separate project, Cisco plans to invest or lend about $500 million in South Korean telecom operators and technology infrastructure over the next five years, it said. —Alastair Goldfisher

Kai-Fu Lee forms Chinese incubator with $115M

Kai-Fu Lee, who this month resigned as president of Google China, has launched Innovation Works, an incubator for Chinese IT startups. The incubator has been funded with $115 million from lead investor WI Harper Group and individual investors Steve Chen (co-founder of YouTube), Terry Gou (chairman of Foxconn), Liu Chuanzhi (chairman of Legend Group) and Yu Minhong (chairman of New Oriental).

Kai-Fu said that Innovation Works will focus on Internet, mobile computing, and cloud computing technology companies targeted at the Greater China market.